GUESSES   AT   THE  RIDDLE 
OF  EXISTENCE 


BESSES   AT 

THE  RIDDLE  OF  EXISTENCE 

AND 

OTHER  ESSAYS  ON  KINDRED  SUBJECTS 


BY 


GOLDWIN   SMITH,   D.C.L. 

AUTHOR  OF  "CANADA  AND  TH|S  CANADIAN  QUESTION,"  "THE 

UNITED  STATES,"  "  ESSAYS  ON  QUESTIONS 

OF  THE  DAY,"  ETC.,  ETC. 


Nein  fforfc 
THE  MACMILLAN   COMPANY 

LONDON :  MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  LTD. 

1897 

All  riffM«  reserved 


COPTRISHT,  1896, 
BT  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 


J.  8.  Gushing  &  Co.  —  Berwick  k  Smith 
Norwood  MBSI.  U.S.A. 


PREFACE 

OF  the  papers  in  this  volume  three  have 
appeared  before  ;  two  in  the  North  American 
Review,  one  in  the  Forum^  to  the  editors  of 
which,  respectively,  the  writer's  thanks  are 
due  for  their  courtesy  in  permitting  the  repub- 
lication.  The  writer  has  also  once  or  twice 
drawn  on  previous  papers  of  his  own. 

For  such  of  the  essays  as  have  appeared  in 
print  some  inquiries  have  been  made.  Those 
who  desire  to  read  them  again  are  probably 
of  the  same  mind  as  the  writer,  and  with  him 
believe  that  there  is  no  longer  any  use  in 
clinging  to  the  untenable  or  in  shutting  our 
eyes  to  that  which  cannot  be  honestly  denied. 
The  educated  world,  and  to  a  great  extent  the 
uneducated  world  also,  has  got  beyond  the 
point  at  which  frank  dealing  with  a  tradi- 
tional creed  can  be  regarded  as  a  wanton  dis- 
turbance of  faith. 


Vi  PREFACE 

Liberal  theologians  have  at  least  half  re- 
signed the  belief  in  miracles,  rationalizing 
wherever  they  can  and  minimizing  where  that 
process  fails.  Liberal  theologians,  and  even 
theologians  by  no  means  ranked  as  liberal,  if 
they  are  learned  and  open-minded,  have  given 
up  the  authenticity  and  authority  of  Genesis. 
With  these  they  must  apparently  give  up  the 
Fall,  the  Redemption,  and  the  Incarnation. 
After  this,  little  is  left  of  the  ecclesiastical 
creeds  for  criticism  to  destroy. 

If  there  is  anything  which,  amidst  all  these 
doubts  and  perplexities,  our  nature  tells  us,  it 
is  that  our  salvation  must  lie  in  our  uncom- 
promising allegiance  to  the  truth.  It  is  hoped 
that  nothing  in  these  pages  will  be  found  fairly 
open  to  the  charge  of  irreverence  or  of  want  of 
tenderness  in  dealing  with  the  creed  which  is 
still  that  of  men  who  are  the  salt  of  the  earth. 

If  much  is,  for  the  present,  lost,  let  us  re- 
member that  there  is  also  much  from  which  by 
the  abandonment  of  dogmatic  tradition  we  are 
relieved.  If,  on  the  one  hand,  the  old  argu- 
ments for  theism  and  immortality  have  failed 
us,  and  the  face  of  the  Father  in  heaven  is  for 


PREFACE  vii 

the  moment  veiled,  on  the  other  hand  we  are 
set  free  from  the  belief  that  all  who  go  not  in 
by  the  strait  gate,  that  is,  the  greater  part  of 
mankind,  are  lost  for  ever  ;  from  belief  in  the 
God  of  Dante,  with  his  everlasting  torture- 
house  ;  from  belief  in  the  God  of  Predestina- 
tion, who  arbitrarily  rejects  half  his  creatures 
and  dooms  them  to  eternal  fire.  That  which 
in  a  good  sermon  has  most  practical  effect  will 
probably  survive  its  ecclesiastical  or  theological 
form. 

The  spirit  in  which  these  pages  are  penned  is 
not  that  of  Agnosticism,  if  Agnosticism  imports 
despair  of  spiritual  truth,  but  that  of  free  and 
hopeful  inquiry,  the  way  for  which  it  is  neces- 
sary to  clear  by  removing  the  wreck  of  that 
upon  which  we  can  found  our  faith  no  more. 

To  resign  untenable  arguments  for  a  belief 
is  not  to  resign  the  belief,  while  a  belief  bound 
up  with  untenable  arguments  will  share  their 
fate. 

Where  the  conclusions  are,  or  seem  to  be, 
negative,  no  one  will  rejoice  more  than  the 
writer  to  see  the  more  welcome  view  reasserted 
and  fresh  evidence  of  its  truth  supplied. 


viii  PREFACE 

If,  as  our  hearts  tell  us,  there  is  a  Supreme 
Being,  he  cares  for  us ;  he  knows  our  perplex- 
ities ;  he  has  his  plan.  If  we  seek  truth,  he 
will  enable  us  in  due  time  to  find  it.  Whether 
we  find  it  cannot  matter  to  him ;  it  may  con- 
ceivably matter  to  him  whether  we  seek  it. 

The  reader  will  look  for  no  attempt  to  dis- 
cuss recondite  questions,  documentary  or  his- 
torical. Nothing  is  attempted  here  beyond  the 
presentation  of  a  plain  case  for  a  practical  pur- 
pose to  the  ordinary  reader. 

It  may  be  thought  presumptuous  in  a  layman 
to  write  on  these  subjects,  though  his  interest 
in  them  is  as  great  as  that  of  the  clergy. 
Would  that  the  clergy  could  write  with  per- 
fect freedom. 

TORONTO,  January,  1897. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 
GUESSES    AT   THE   KIDDLE   OP   EXISTENCE      .         .         1 

THE   CHURCH   AND   THE   OLD    TESTAMENT      .         .  47 

IS    THERE   ANOTHER   LIFE? 97 

THE   MIRACULOUS    ELEMENT    IN   CHRISTIANITY  .  135 

MORALITY   AND   THEISM                           ....  189 


GUESSES   AT   THE   RIDDLE   OF 
EXISTENCE 


GUESSES  AT  THE   RIDDLE   OF 
EXISTENCE 

NEVER  before  has  the  intellect  of  man  been 
brought  so  directly  face  to  face  with  the  mys- 
tery of  existence  as  it  is  now.  Some  veil  of 
religious  tradition  has  always  been  interposed. 
At  the  beginning  of  this  century  most  minds 
still  rested  in  the  Mosaic  cosmogony  and  the 
Noachic  deluge.  Greek  speculation  was  free, 
and  its  freedom  makes  it  an  object  of  extreme 
interest  to  us  at  the  present  time.  But  it  was 
not  intensely  serious  ;  it  was  rather  the  intel- 
lectual amusement  of  a  summer  day  in  Academe 
beneath  the  whispering  plane. 

No  one  who  reads  and  thinks  freely  can 
doubt  that  the  cosmogonical  and  historical 
foundations  of  traditional  belief  have  been 
sapped  by  science  and  criticism.  When  the 
crust  shall  fall  in  appears  to  be  a  question  of 
time,  and  the  moment  can  hardly  fail  to  be  one 
3 


4       GUESSES  AT  THE  RIDDLE  OF  EXISTENCE 

of  peril ;  not  least  in  the  United  States,  where 
education  is  general  and  opinion  spreads  rapidly 
over  a  level  field,  with  no  barriers  to  arrest  its 
sweep. 

Ominous  symptoms  already  appear.  Almost 
all  the  churches  are  troubled  with  heterodoxy 
and  are  trying  clergymen  for  heresy.  Quite  as 
significant  seems  the  growing  tendency  of  the 
pulpit  to  concern  itself  less  with  religious 
dogma  and  more  with  the  estate  of  man  in 
his  present  world.  It  is  needless  to  say  what 
voices  of  unbelief  outside  the  churches  are  heard 
and  how  high  are  the  intellectual  quarters 
from  which  they  come.  Christian  ethics  still 
in  part  retain  their  hold.  So  does  the  Church 
as  a  social  centre  and  a  reputed  safeguard  of 
social  order.  But  faith  in  the  dogmatic  creed 
and  the  history  is  waxing  faint.  Ritualism 
itself  seems  to  betray  the  need  of  a  new  stimu- 
lus and  to  be  in  some  measure  an  aesthetic  sub- 
stitute for  spiritual  religion. 

Dogmatic  religion  may  be  said  to  have  re- 
ceived a  fatal  wound  three  centuries  ago,  when 
the  Ptolemaic  system  was  succeeded  by  the 
Copernican,  and  the  real  relation  of  the  earth 


GUESSES  AT  THE  RIDDLE  OF  EXISTENCE       5 

to  the  universe  was  disclosed.  Dogmatic  reli- 
gion is  geocentric.  It  assumes  that  our  earth  is 
the  centre  of  the  universe,  the  primary  object 
of  divine  care,  and  the  grand  theatre  of  divine 
administration.  The  tendency  was  carried  to 
the  height  of  travesty  when  an  insanely  ultra- 
montane party  at  Rome  meditated,  as,  if  we 
may  believe  Dr.  Pusey,  it  did,  the  declaration 
of  a  hypostatic  union  of  the  Pope  and  the  Holy 
Ghost. 

The  effect  of  the  blow  dealt  by  Copernicus 
was  long  suspended,  but  it  is  fully  felt  now 
that  the  kingdom  of  science  is  come,  and  the 
bearings  of  scientific  discovery  are  generally 
known.  When  daylight  gives  place  to  star- 
light we  are  transported  from  the  earth  to  the 
universe,  and  to  the  thoughts  which  the  con- 
templation of  the  universe  begets.  "  What  is 
man,  that  Thou  art  mindful  of  him  ?  "  is  the 
question  that  then  arises  in  our  minds.  Is  it 
possible  that  so  much  importance  as  the  creeds 
imply  can  attach  to  this  tiny  planet  and  to  the 
little  drama  of  humanity  ?  We  might  be  half 
inclined  to  think  that  man  has  taken  himself 
too  seriously  and  that  in  the  humorous  part  of 


6       GUESSES  AT  THE  RIDDLE  OF  EXISTENCE 

our  nature,  overlooked  by  philosophy,  is  to  be 
found  the  key  to  his  mystery.  The  feeling  is 
enhanced  when  we  consider  that  we  have  no 
reason  for  believing  that  the  evidence  of  our 
senses  is  exhaustive,  however  much  Science, 
with  her  telescopes,  microscopes,  and  spectro- 
scopes, may  extend  their  range.  We  cannot 
tell  that  we  are  not  like  the  sightless  denizens  of 
the  Mammoth  Cave,  unconsciously  living  in  the 
midst  of  wonders  and  glories  beyond  our  ken. 

Nor  has  the  natural  theology  of  the  old 
school  suffered  from  free  criticism  much  less 
than  revelation.  Optimism  of  the  orthodox 
kind  seems  no  longer  possible.  Christianity 
itself,  indeed,  is  not  optimistic.  It  represents 
the  earth  as  cursed  for  man's  sake,  ascribing 
the  curse  to  primeval  sin,  and  the  prevalence 
of  evil  in  the  moral  world  as  not  only  great  but 
permanent,  since  those  who  enter  the  gate  of 
eternal  death  are  many,  while  those  who  enter 
the  gate  of  eternal  life  are  few.  Natural  theol- 
ogy of  the  optimistic  school  and  popular  reli- 
gion have  thus  been  at  variance  with  each 
other.  The  old  argument  from  design  is  now 
met  with  the  answer  that  we  have  nothing 


GUESSES  AT  THE  RIDDLE  OF  EXISTENCE       7 

with  which  to  compare  this  world,  and  there- 
fore cannot  tell  whether  it  was  possible  for 
it  to  be  other  than  it  is.  Mingled  with  the 
signs  of  order,  science  discloses  apparent  signs 
of  disorder,  miscarriage,  failure,  wreck,  and 
waste.  Our  satellite,  so  far  as  we  can  see, 
is  either  a  miscarriage  or  a  wreck.  Natural 
selection  by  a  struggle  for  existence,  protracted 
through  countless  ages,  with  the  painful  ex- 
tinction of  the  weaker  members  of  the  race, 
and  even  of  whole  races,  is  hardly  the  course 
which  benevolence,  such  as  we  conceive  it, 
combined  with  omnipotence,  would  be  ex- 
pected to  take.  If  in  the  case  of  men  suffer- 
ing is  discipline,  though  this  can  hardly  be 
said  when  infants  die  or  myriads  are  indis- 
criminately swept  off  by  plague,  in  the  case 
of  animals,  which  are  incapable  of  discipline 
and  have  no  future  life,  it  can  be  nothing 
but  suffering ;  and  it  often  amounts  to  tor- 
ture. The  evil  passions  of  men,  with  all  the 
miseries  and  horrors  which  they  have  pro- 
duced, are  a  part  of  human  nature,  which 
itself  is  a  part  of  creation.  Through  the 
better  parts  of  human  nature  and  what  there 


8        GUESSES  AT  THE  RIDDLE  OF  EXISTENCE 

is  of  order,  beneficence,  majesty,  tenderness, 
and  beauty  in  the  universe,  a  spirit  is  felt 
appealing  to  ours,  and  a  promise  seems  to  be 
conveyed.  But  if  omnipotence  and  benevo- 
lence are  to  meet,  it  must  apparently  be  at  a 
point  at  present  beyond  our  ken.  These  are 
the  perplexities  which  obtrude  themselves  on 
a  scientific  age. 

What  is  man?  Whence  comes  he?  Whither 
goes  he?  In  the  hands  of  what  power  is 
he?  What  are  the  character  and  designs  of 
that  power?  These  are  questions  which,  now 
directly  presented  to  us,  are  of  such  over- 
whelming magnitude  that  we  almost  wonder 
at  the  zeal  and  heat  which  other  questions, 
such  as  party  politics,  continue  to  excite. 
The  interest  felt  in  them,  however,  is  daily 
deepening,  and  an  attentive  audience  is  assured 
to  any  one  who  comes  forward  with  a  solution, 
however  crude,  of  the  mystery  of  existence. 
Attentive  audiences  have  gathered  round  Mr. 
Kidd,  Mr.  Drummond,  and  Mr.  Balfour,  each 
of  whom  has  a  theory  to  propound.  Mr. 
Kidd's  work  has  had  special  vogue,  and  the 
compliments  which  its  author  pays  to  Pro- 


GUESSES  AT  THE  RIDDLE  OF  EXISTENCE       9 

fessor   Weismann   have   been   reciprocated   by 
that  luminary  of  science. 

Mr.  Drummond  undertakes  to  reconcile,  and 
more  than  reconcile,  our  natural  theology  and 
our  moral  instincts  to  the  law  of  evolution. 
His  title,  The  Ascent  of  Man,  is  not  new ; 
probably  it  has  been  used  by  more  than  one 
writer  before  ;  nor  is  he  the  first  to  point 
out  that  the  humble  origin  of  the  human 
species,  instead  of  dejecting,  ought  to  encour- 
age us,  since  the  being  who  has  risen  from 
an  ape  to  Socrates  and  Newton  may  hope  to 
rise  still  higher  in  the  future,  if  not  by 
further  physical  development,  which  physi- 
ology seems  to  bar  by  pronouncing  the  brain 
unsusceptible  of  further  organic  improvement, 
yet  by  intellectual  and  moral  effort.  Mr. 
Drummond  treats  his  subject  with  great  brill- 
iancy of  style  and  adorns  it  with  very  in- 
teresting illustrations.  Not  less  firmly  than 
Voltaire's  optimist  persuaded  himself  that 
this  was  the  best  of  all  possible  worlds,  he 
has  persuaded  himself  that  evolution  was  the 
only  right  method  of  creation.  He  ulti- 
mately identifies  it  with  love.  The  cruelties 


10     GUESSES  AT  THE  RIDDLE  OF  EXISTENCE 

incidental  to  it  he  palliates  with  a  compla- 
cency which  sometimes  provokes  a  smile.  All 
of  them  seem  to  him  comparatively  of  little 
account,  inasmuch  as  the  struggle  for  exist- 
ence was  to  lead  up  to  the  struggle  for  the 
existence  of  others,  in  other  words,  to  the 
production  of  maternity  and  paternity,  with 
the  altruism,  as  he  terms  it,  or,  as  we  have 
hitherto  termed  it,  the  affection,  attendant 
on  those  relations.  To  reconcile  us  to  the 
sufferings  of  the  vanquished  in  the  struggle 
he  dilates  on  "the  keenness  of  its  energies, 
the  splendour  of  its  stimulus,  its  bracing  effect 
on  character,  its  wholesome  lessons  through- 
out the  whole  range  of  character."  "With- 
out the  vigorous  weeding  of  the  imperfect," 
he  says,  "the  progress  of  the  world  would 
not  have  been  possible."  Pleasant  reading 
this  for  "  the  imperfect "  ! 

"  If  fit  and  unfit  indiscriminately  had  been  allowed  to 
live  and  reproduce  their  kind,  every  improvement  which 
any  individual  might  acquire  would  be  degraded  to  the 
common  level  in  the  course  of  a  few  generations.  Prog- 
ress can  only  start  by  one  or  two  individuals  shooting 
ahead  of  their  species;  and  their  life-gain  can  only  be 
conserved  by  their  being  shut  off  from  their  species  — 


GUESSES  AT  THE  RIDDLE  OF  EXISTENCE     11 

or  by  their  species  being  shut  off  from  them.  Unless 
shut  off  from  their  species  their  acquisition  will  either 
be  neutralized  in  the  course  of  time  by  the  swamping 
effect  of  inter-breeding  with  the  common  herd,  or  so 
diluted  as  to  involve  no  real  advance.  The  only  chance 
for  evolution,  then,  is  either  to  carry  off  these  improved 
editions  into  'physiological  isolation,'  or  to  remove  the 
unimproved  editions  by  wholesale  death.  The  first  of 
these  two  alternatives  is  only  occasionally  possible ;  the 
second  always.  Hence  the  death  of  the  unevolved,  or 
of  the  unadapted  in  reference  to  some  new  and  higher 
relation  with  environment,  is  essential  to  the  perpetua- 
tion of  a  useful  variation." 

This  reasoning,  with  much  more  to  the 
same  effect,  is  plainly  a  limitation  of  omnip- 
otence. It  supposes  that  the  ruling  power 
of  the  universe  could  attain  the  end  only  at 
the  expense  of  wholesale  carnage  and  suffer- 
ing, facts  which  cannot  be  glozed  over,  and 
which,  as  the  weakness  was  not  the  fault 
of  the  weak,  but  of  their  Maker,  are  in 
apparently  irreconcilable  conflict  with  our 
human  notions  of  benevolence  and  justice. 

This,  however,  is  not  all.  We  might,  com- 
paratively speaking,  be  reconciled  to  Mr.  Drum- 
mond's  plan  of  creation  if  all  the  carnage  and 
suffering  could  be  shown  to  be  necessary  or 


12     GUESSES  AT  THE  RIDDLE  OF  EXISTENCE 

even  conducive  to  the  great  end  of  giving  birth 
to  humanity  and  love.  But  Mr.  Drummond 
himself  has  to  admit  that  natural  selection  by 
no  means  invariably  works  in  the  direction  of 
progress  ;  that  in  the  case  of  parasites  its  result 
has  been  almost  utter  degradation.  The  phe- 
nomena of  parasites  and  entozoa,  with  the  need- 
less torments  which  they  inflict,  appear  irrecon- 
cilable with  any  optimistic  theory  of  the  direc- 
tion of  suffering  and  destruction  to  a  paramount 
and  compensating  end.  Not  only  so,  but  all  the 
extinct  races  except  those  which  are  in  the  line 
leading  up  to  man  and  may  be  numbered  among 
his  progenitors,  must  apparently,  upon  Mr. 
Drummond's  hypothesis,  have  suffered  and 
perished  in  vain.  That  "a  price,  a  price  in 
pain,  and  assuredly  sometimes  a  very  terrible 
price,"  has  been  paid  for  the  evolution  of  the 
world,  after  all  is  said,  Mr.  Drummond  admits 
to  be  certain.  But  he  holds  it  indisputable 
that  even  at  the  highest  estimate  the  thing 
bought  with  that  price  was  none  too  dear,  inas- 
much as  it  was  nothing  less  than  the  present 
progress  of  the  world.  So  he  thinks  we  "  may 
safely  leave  Nature  to  look  after  her  own  ethic." 


GUESSES  AT  THE  RIDDLE  OF  EXISTENCE    13 

Probably  we  might  if  all  the  pain  was  part  of 
the  price.  But  we  are  distinctly  told  that  it 
was  not ;  so  that  there  is  much  of  it  in  which, 
with  our  present  lights  or  any  that  Mr.  Drum- 
mond  is  able  to  afford  us,  men  can  hardly  help 
thinking  that  they  see  the  ruthless  operation  of 
blind  chance.  Nature,  being  a  mere  abstraction, 
has  no  ethic  to  look  after  ;  nor  has  Evolution, 
which  is  not  a  power,  but  a  method,  though  it 
is  personified,  we  might  almost  say  deified,  by 
its  exponent.  But  if  there  is  not  some  higher 
authority  which  looks  after  ethic,  what  becomes 
of  the  ethic  of  man  ?  The  most  inhuman  of 
vivisectors,  if  he  could  show  that  his  practice 
really  led,  or  was  at  all  likely  to  lead,  to  know- 
ledge, would  have  a  better  plea  than,  in  the 
case  of  suffering  and  destruction  which  have 
led  to  nothing,  the  philosophy  of  evolution  can 
by  itself  put  in  for  the  Author  of  our  being. 

Mr.  Drummond's  treatise,  like  those  of  other 
evolutionists,  at  least  of  the  optimistic  school, 
assumes  the  paramount  value  of  the  type,  and 
the  rightfulness  of  sacrificing  individuals  with- 
out limit  to  its  perfection  and  preservation. 
But  this  assumption  surely  requires  to  be  made 


14     GUESSES  AT  THE  RIDDLE  OF  EXISTENCE 

good,  both  to  our  intellects  and  to  our  hearts. 
The  ultimate  perfection  and  preservation  of 
the  type  cannot,  so  far  as  we  see,  indemnify 
the  individuals  who  have  perished  miserably  in 
the  preliminary  stages.  Far  from  having  an 
individual  interest  in  the  evolution  of  the  type, 
the  sufferers  of  the  ages  before  Darwin  had  not 
even  the  clear  idea  of  a  type  for  their  consola- 
tion. Besides,  what  is  the  probable  destiny  of  the 
type  itself  ?  Science  appears  to  tell  us  pretty 
confidently  that  the  days  of  our  planet,  how- 
ever many  they  may  be,  are  numbered,  and  that 
it  is  doomed  at  last  to  fall  back  into  primeval 
chaos,  with  all  the  types  which  it  may  contain. 
Evolutionists,  in  their  enthusiasm  for  the 
species,  are  apt  to  bestow  little  thought  on  the 
sentient  members  of  which  it  consists.  "Man  " 
is  a  mere  generalization.  This  they  forget, 
and  speak  as  if  all  men  personally  shared  the 
crown  of  the  final  heirs  of  human  civilization. 
The  following  passage  is  an  instance  :  — 

"Science  is  charged,  be  it  once  more  recalled,  with 
numbering  Man  among  the  beasts,  and  levelling  his  body 
with  the  dust.  But  he  who  reads  for  himself  the  history 
of  creation  as  it  is  written  by  the  hand  of  Evolution  will 


GUESSES  AT  THE  RIDDLE  OF  EXISTENCE    15 

be  overwhelmed  by  the  glory  and  honour  heaped  upon  this 
creature.  To  be  a  Man,  and  to  have  no  conceivable  suc- 
cessor; to  be  the  fruit  and  crown  of  the  long-past  eter- 
nity, and  the  highest  possible  fruit  and  crown ;  to  be  the 
last  victor  among  the  decimated  phalanxes  of  earlier  ex- 
istences, and  to  be  nevermore  defeated ;  to  be  the  best 
that  Nature  in  her  strength  and  opulence  can  produce ; 
to  be  the  first  of  the  new  order  of  beings  who,  by  their 
dominion  over  the  lower  world  and  their  equipment  for 
a  higher,  reveal  that  they  are  made  in  the  Image  of  God 
—  to  be  this  is  to  be  elevated  to  a  rank  in  Nature  more 
exalted  than  any  philosophy  or  any  poetry  or  any  theol- 
ogy has  ever  given  to  man.  Man  was  always  told  that 
his  place  was  high ;  the  reason  for  it  he  never  knew  till 
now ;  he  never  knew  that  his  title  deeds  were  the  very 
law*  of  Nature,  that  he  alone  was  the  Alpha  and  Omega 
of  Creation,  the  beginning  and  the  end  of  Matter,  the 
final  goal  of  Life." 

To  be  the  last  victor  among  the  decimated 
phalanxes  of  earlier  existences,  and  to  be 
nevermore  defeated,  is,  to  say  the  least,  a  dif- 
ferent sort  of  satisfaction  from  the  glorious 
triumph  of  love  in  which  the  process  of  Evolu- 
tion, according  to  Mr.  Drummond,  ends,  and 
in  virtue  of  which  he  proclaims  that  Evolu- 
tion is  nothing  but  the  Involution  of  love,  the 
revelation  of  Infinite  Spirit,  the  Eternal  Life 
returning  to  itself.  It  even  reminds  us  a  little 


16     GUESSES  AT  THE  RIDDLE  OF  EXISTENCE 

of  the  unamiable  belief  that  in  the  next  world 
the  sight  of  the  wicked  in  torment  will  be  a 
part  of  the  enjoyment  of  the  righteous.  Per- 
haps there  is  also  a  touch  of  lingering  geocen- 
tricism  in  this  rapturous  exaltation  of  Man. 
Evolution  can  give  us  no  assurance  that  there 
are  not  in  other  planets  creatures  no  less 
superior  to  man  than  he  is  to  the  lower  tribes 
upon  this  earth. 

The  crown  of  evolution  in  Mr.  Drummond's 
system  is  the  evolution  of  a  mother,  accom- 
panied by  that  of  a  father,  which,  however, 
appears  to  be  inferior  in  degree.  The  chapters 
on  this  subject  are  more  than  philosophy  ;  they 
are  poetry,  soaring  almost  into  rhapsody. 
"The  goal,"  Mr.  Drummond  says,  "of  the 
whole  plant  and  animal  kingdoms  seems  to 
have  been  the  creation  of  a  family  which  the 
very  naturalist  has  to  call  mammals."  The 
following  passage  is  the  climax  :  — 

"But  by  far  the  most  vital  point  remains.  For  we 
have  next  to  observe  how  this  bears  directly  on  the  theme 
we  set  out  to  explore  —  the  Evolution  of  Love.  The  pas- 
sage from  mere  Otherism,  in  the  physiological  sense,  to 
Altruism,  in  the  moral  sense,  occurs  in  connection  with 


GUESSES  AT  THE  RIDDLE  OF  EXISTENCE    17 

the  due  performance  of  her  natural  task  by  her  to  whom 
the  Struggle  for  the  Life  of  Others  is  assigned.  That 
task,  translated  into  one  great  word,  is  Maternity — 
which  is  nothing  but  the  Struggle  for  the  Life  of  Others 
transfigured  to  the  moral  sphere.  Focussed  in  a  single 
human  being,  this  function,  as  we  rise  in  history,  slowly 
begins  to  be  accompanied  by  those  heaven-born  psychical 
states  which  transform  the  femaleness  of  the  older  order 
into  the  Motherhood  of  the  new.  When  one  follows 
Maternity  out  of  the  depths  of  lower  Nature,  and  beholds 
it  ripening  in  quality  as  it  reaches  the  human  sphere,  its 
character,  and  the  character  of  the  processes  by  which  it 
is  evolved,  appear  in  their  full  divinity.  For  of  what  is 
maternity  the  mother?  Of  children?  No;  for  these  are 
the  mere  vehicle  of  its  spiritual  manifestation.  Of  affec- 
tion between  female  and  male?  No;  for  that,  contrary 
to  accepted  beliefs,  has  little  to  do  in  the  first  instance 
with  sex-relations.  Of  what  then?  Of  Love  itself,  of 
Love  as  Love,  of  Love  as  Life,  of  Love  as  Humanity,  of 
Love  as  the  pure  and  undefined  fountain  of  all  that  is 
eternal  in  the  world.  In  the  long  stillness  which  follows 
the  crisis  of  Maternity,  witnessed  only  by  the  new  and 
helpless  life  which  is  at  once  the  last  expression  of  the 
older  function  and  the  unconscious  vehicle  of  the  new, 
Humanity  is  born." 

The  father  seems  to  be  here  shut  out  from 
the  apotheosis ;  though  why,  except  from  a  sort 
of  philosophic  gallantry,  it  is  difficult  to  dis- 
cern. The  man  who  toils  from  morning  till 


18     GUESSES  AT  THE  RIDDLE  OF  EXISTENCE 

night  to  support  wife  and  child  surely  has  not 
less  to  do  with  it  than  the  woman  who  feeds 
the  child  from  her  breast. 

Somewhat  paradoxical  as  it  may  seem,  Mr. 
Drummond  maintains  that  love  did  not  come 
from  lovers.  It  was  not  they  that  bestowed 
this  gift  upon  the  world.  It  was  the  first 
child,  "till  whose  appearance  man's  affection 
was  non-existent,  woman's  was  frozen ;  and 
man  did  not  love  the  woman,  and  woman  did 
not  love  the  man."  Apparently,  then,  in  a 
childless  couple  there  can  be  no  love.  Here, 
according  to  Mr.  Drummond,  is  the  birth  of 
Altruism,  for  which  all  creation  has  travailed 
from  the  beginning  of  time.  This  appears  to 
him  a  satisfactory  solution  of  the  problem  of 
existence.  Yet  the  races  which  have  been  sac- 
rificed to  the  production  of  altruism,  if  they 
were  critical  and  could  find  a  voice,  might  ask 
if  there  was  anything  totally  unselfish  in  the 
indulgence  of  the  sexual  passion,  which  after 
all  plays  its  part  in  the  matter,  and  of  which 
the  birth  of  a  child  is  the  unavoidable,  not 
perhaps  always  the  welcome,  consequence.  To 
the  mother  the  child  is  necessary  for  a  time 


GUESSES  AT  THE  RIDDLE  OF  EXISTENCE    19 

in  order  to  relieve  her  of  a  physical  secretion, 
while  it  repays  her  care  by  its  endearments, 
the  enjoyment  of  which  is  altruistic  only  on 
the  irrational  hypothesis  that  affection  and 
domesticity  are  not  parts  of  self.  To  both 
parents,  in  the  primitive  state  at  all  events, 
children  are  necessary  as  the  support  and  pro- 
tection of  old  age.  Beautiful  and  touching 
parental  affection  is ;  pure  altruism  it  is  not. 
Very  admirable,  as  a  part  of  man's  estate,  it 
is ;  but  we  can  hardly  accept  its  appearance 
as  a  sufficient  justification  of  all  that  has  been 
suffered  in  the  process  of  evolution  or  as  a 
solution  of  the  mystery  of  existence.  It  is 
curious  that  Mr.  Drummond  should  place  the 
happiest  scene  of  female  development  and  all 
that  depends  on  it  in  the  country  where 
divorces  are  most  common  and  the  increase  of 
their  number  is  most  rapid.  He  may  have 
noted,  too,  that  in  that  same  country  and 
among  the  most  highly  civilized  races  families 
are  proportionately  small  and  fewer  women 
become  mothers. 

Then,  put  the  mammalia  as  high  as  we  will 
in  the  scale  of  being,  they  are  mortal.     Evo- 


lution  tells  us  complacently  that  death  is 
necessary  to  the  progress  of  the  species.  It 
may  be  so ;  but  what  is  that  to  the  individ- 
ual ?  The  more  intense  and  exalted  affection, 
whether  conjugal  or  parental,  is,  the  more 
heartrending  is  the  thought  of  the  parting 
which  any  day  and  any  one  of  a  thousand 
accidents  may  bring,  while  it  is  sure  to  come 
after  a  few  years.  Pleasure  and  happiness 
are  different  things.  Pleasure  may  be  en- 
joyed for  the  moment  without  any  thought 
of  the  future.  The  condemned  criminal  may 
enjoy  it,  and,  it  seems,  does  not  uncommonly 
enjoy  it  in  eating  his  last  meal.  But  happi- 
ness appears  to  be  hardly  possible  without  a 
sense  of  security,  much  less  with  annihilation 
always  in  sight.  The  oracle  to  which  we 
are  listening  has  told  us  nothing  about  a  life 
beyond  the  present.  It  is  needless  to  say 
how  much  the  character  of  that  question  has 
been  altered  since  the  corporeal  origin  and 
relations  of  our  mental  faculties,  and  of  what 
theology  calls  the  soul,  have  been  apparently 
disclosed  by  science.  The  thought  of  con- 
scious existence  without  end  is  one  which 


GUESSES  AT  THE  RIDDLE  OF  EXISTENCE     21 

makes  the  mind,  as  it  were,  ache,  and  under 
which  imagination  reels  ;  yet  the  thought  of 
annihilation  is  not  welcome,  nor  have  we  up 
to  this  time  distinctly  faced  it.  If  ever  it 
should  be  distinctly  faced  by  us,  its  influence 
on  life  and  action  can  hardly  fail  to  be  felt. 
Is  the  evolutionary  optimist  himself  content 
to  believe  that  nothing  will  survive  the  wreck, 
inevitable,  if  science  is  to  be  trusted,  of  this 
world  ? 

To  say  that  a  particular  solution  of  a  diffi- 
culty is  incomplete  is  not  to  say  that  the 
difficulty  is  insoluble  or  even  to  pronounce 
the  particular  solution  worthless.  Mr.  Drum- 
mond's  solution  may  be  incomplete,  and  yet 
it  may  have  value.  The  only  moral  excel- 
lence of  which  we  have  any  experience  or 
can  form  a  distinct  idea,  is  that  produced  by 
moral  effort.  If  we  try  to  form  an  idea  of 
moral  excellence  unproduced  by  effort,  the 
only  result  is  seraphic  insipidity.  This  may 
seem  to  afford  a  glimpse  of  possible  recon- 
ciliation between  evolution  and  our  moral 
instincts.  If  upward  struggle  towards  perfec- 
tion, rather  than  perfection  created  by  fiat, 


22      GUESSES  AT  THE  RIDDLE  OF  EXISTENCE 

is  the  law  of  the  universe,  we  may  see  in  it, 
at  all  events,  something  analogous  to  the  law 
of  our  moral  nature. 

Mr.  Kidd's  theory  is  that  man  owes  his 
progress  to  his  having  acted  against  his 
reason  in  obedience  to  a  supernatural  and 
extra-rational  sanction  of  action  which  is 
identified  with  religion.  The  interest  of  the 
individual  and  that  of  society,  Mr.  Kidd 
holds  to  be  radically  opposed  to  each  other. 
Reason  bids  the  individual  prefer  his  own 
interest.  The  supernatural  and  extra-rational 
sanction  bids  him  prefer  the  interest  of  so- 
ciety, which  is  assumed  to  be  paramount,  and 
thus  civilization  advances.  The  practical  con- 
clusion is  that  the  churches  are  the  greatest 
instruments  of  human  progress. 

What  does  Mr.  Kidd  mean  by  reason  ?  He 
appears  to  regard  it  as  a  special  organ  or 
faculty,  capable  of  being  contradicted  by 
another  faculty,  as  one  sense  sometimes  for  a 
moment  contradicts  another  sense,  or  as  our 
senses  are  corrected  by  our  intelligence  in 
the  case  of  the  apparent  motion  of  the  sun. 
But  our  reason  comprises  all  the  mental  ante- 


GUESSES  AT  THE  RIDDLE  OF  EXISTENCE     23 

cedents  of  action.  It  is  the  man's  intellectual 
self.  To  be  misled  by  it  when  weak  or  per- 
verted is  possible;  to  act  consciously  against 
it  is  not.  Simeon  Stylites  obeys  it  as  well  as 
Sardanapalus  or  Jay  Gould.  He  believes,  how- 
ever absurdly,  that  the  Deity  accepts  the  sacri- 
fice of  self-torture,  and  that  it  will  be  well  for 
the  self-torturer  in  the  sum  of  things.  His 
self-torture  is  therefore  in  accordance  with 
his  individual  reason,  though  it  is  far  enough 
from  being  in  accordance  with  reason  in  the 
abstract.  A  supernatural  sanction,  supposing 
its  reality  to  be  proved,  becomes  a  part  of  the 
data  on  which  reason  acts,  or  rather  it  becomes, 
for  the  occasion,  the  sole  datum;  and  to  obey 
it,  instead  of  being  unreasonable,  is  the  most 
reasonable  thing  in  the  world.  Misled  by  his 
reason,  we  repeat,  to  any  extent  a  man  may  be, 
both  in  matters  speculative  and  practical;  but 
he  can  no  more  think  or  act  outside  of  his 
reason,  that  is,  the  entirety  of  his  impressions 
and  inducements,  than  he  can  jump  out  of  his 
skin.  What  Mr.  Kidd  seems  at  bottom  to 
mean  is  that  we  may  and  do,  with  the  best 
results,  prefer  social  to  individual,  and  moral  to 


24      GUESSES  AT  THE  RIDDLE  OF  EXISTENCE 

material,  objects.  But  this  is  a  totally  different 
thing  from  acting  against  reason,  and  while  it 
requires  a  certain  elevation  of  character,  it 
requires  no  extra-rational  motive. 

Mr.  Kidd  speaks  of  "reason"  and  the  ca- 
pacity for  acting  with  his  fellows  in  society  as 
"  two  new  forces  which  made  their  advent  with 
man."  He  cannot  mean,  what  his  words  might 
be  taken  to  imply,  that  the  rudiments  of  reason 
are  not  discernible  in  brutes,  or  that  sociability 
does  not  prevail  in  the  herd,  the  swarm,  and 
the  hive.  To  the  herd,  the  swarm,  and  the 
hive  sacrifices  of  the  individual  animal  or  insect 
are  made  like  those  of  the  individual  man  to 
his  community.  Is  there  supernatural  or  extra- 
rational  sanction  in  the  case  of  the  deer,  the 
ant,  or  the  bee  ? 

Altruism,  acting  against  reason  with  a  super- 
natural and  extra-rational  sanction,  is,  accord- 
ing to  Mr.  Kidd,  the  motive  power  of  progress. 
But  this  altruism  of  which  we  hear  so  much, 
what  is  it  ?  Man  is  not  only  a  self-regardant, 
but  a  sympathetic,  domestic,  and  social  being. 
He  is  so  by  nature,  just  as  he  is  a  biped  or  a 
mammal.  How  he  became  so  the  physiologist 


GUESSES  AT  THE  RIDDLE  OF  EXISTENCE     25 

and  psychologist  must  be  left  to  explain.  But 
a  sympathetic,  domestic,  and  social  being  he  is, 
and  in  gratifying  his  sympathetic,  domestic,  or 
social  propensities,  he  is  no  more  altruistic,  if 
altruism  means  disregard  of  self,  than  he  is 
when  he  gratifies  his  desire  of  food  or  motion. 
Self  is  not  disregarded,  because  self  is  sympa- 
thetic, domestic,  and  social.  The  man  of  feel- 
ing identifies  himself  with  his  kind;  the  father 
with  his  children;  the  patriot  with  his  state; 
and  they  all  look  in  various  forms  for  a  return 
of  their  affection  or  devotion.  The  man  in 
each  of  the  cases  goes  out  of  his  narrower  self, 
but  he  does  not  go  out  of  self.  Show  us  the 
altruist  who  gives  up  his  dinner  to  benefit  the 
inhabitants  of  the  planet  Mars,  and  we  will 
admit  the  existence  of  altruism  in  the  sense  in 
which  the  term  seems  to  be  used  by  Mr.  Kidd 
and  some  other  philosophers  of  to-day. 

Reason,  as  defined  by  Mr.  Kidd,  appears  to 
be  a  faculty  which  tells  us  what  is  desirable, 
but  does  not  tell  us  what  is  possible.  "The 
lower  classes  of  our  population,"  he  says,  "  have 
no  sanction  from  reason  for  maintaining  exist- 
ing conditions."  "They  should  in  self-interest 


26      GUESSES  AT  THE  RIDDLE  OF  EXISTENCE 

put  an  immediate  end  to  existing  social  condi- 
tions." Why,  so  they  would  if  they  had  the 
power,  supposing  their  condition  and  the  causes 
of  it  to  be  what  Mr.  Kidd  represents.  It  is 
not  altruism  that  prevents  them,  but  necessity; 
the  same  necessity  which  constrains  people  of 
all  classes  to  submit  to  evils  of  various  kinds, 
submission  to  which,  if  unnecessary,  would  be 
idiotic.  That  poverty  and  calamity  have  been 
endured  more  patiently  in  the  hope  of  a  com- 
pensation hereafter  is  true,  but  makes  no  differ- 
ence as  to  the  reasonableness  of  the  endurance. 
From  a  comparison  of  the  two  sentences  just 
quoted,  it  would  appear  that  Mr.  Kidd  identi- 
fies reason  with  self-interest,  and,  therefore,  with 
something  antagonistic  to  society.  Whereas,  in 
a  sociable  being,  conformity  to  the  laws  of  society 
is  reason.  "  The  interests  of  the  social  organism 
and  of  the  individual,"  says  Mr.  Kidd,  "are  and 
must  remain  antagonistic."  Why  so  in  the  case 
of  a  man  any  more  than  in  that  of  a  bee  ? 

What  is  the  "  supernatural  and  extra-rational 
sanction  "  in  virtue  of  which  man  acts  against 
the  dictates  of  his  reason,  and  by  so  acting 
makes  progress  ?  Religion.  What  is  religion  ? 


OUESSES  AT  THE  RIDDLE  OF  EXISTENCE     27 

"  A  religion  is  a  form  of  belief  providing  an  ultra- 
rational  sanction  for  that  large  class  of  conduct  in 
the  individual  where  his  interests  and  the  interests  of 
the  social  organism  are  antagonistic,  and  by  which  the 
former  are  rendered  subordinate  to  the  latter  in  the 
general  interests  of  the  evolution  which  the  race  is 
undergoing." 

Here  is  a  definition  of  religion  without  men- 
tion of  God.  The  supernatural  sanction  is  re- 
ligion, and  religion  is  a  supernatural  sanction. 
This  surely  does  not  give  us  much  new  light. 
But  we  are  further  told  that  "  there  can  never 
be  such  a  thing  as  a  rational  religion."  Super- 
stition, such  as  the  worship  of  Moloch,  that  of 
Apis,  that  of  the  Gods  of  Mexico,  or  mediaeval 
religion  in  its  debased  form,  is  not  rational, 
nor  will  our  calling  it  supernatural  or  extra- 
rational  make  it  an  influence  above  nature  and 
reason,  or  prove  it  to  have  been  the  motive 
power  of  progress,  which,  on  the  contrary,  it 
has  retarded  and  sometimes,  as  in  the  case  of 
Egypt,  killed  outright.  But  religions  which 
in  their  day  have  been  instruments  of  progress, 
and  among  which  may  perhaps  be  numbered, 
at  a  grade  lower  than  Christianity,  Moham- 
medanism and  Buddhism,  have  owed  their 


28      GUESSES  AT  THE  RIDDLE  OF  EXISTENCE 

character  to  their  rational  adaptation  to  human 
nature  and  their  consecration  of  rational  effort. 
They  are  counterparts,  not  of  the  polytheistic 
state  religion  of  Greece,  but  of  the  Socratic 
philosophy,  which  had  a  divinity  of  its  own, 
the  impersonation  of  its  morality,  and  paid 
homage  to  the  state  polytheism  only  by  sacri- 
ficing a  cock  to  ^Esculapius.  Christianity,  as 
it  came  from  the  lips  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth, 
was,  like  the  philosophy  of  Socrates,  unliturgi- 
cal  and  unsacerdotal ;  its  liturgy  was  one  sim- 
ple prayer.  "  Supernatural "  is  a  convenient 
word,  but  it  by  implication  begs  the  question, 
and  when  applied  to  superstitions  is  most  fal- 
lacious. "  Infranatural,"  or  something  imply- 
ing degradation  and  grossness,  not  elevation 
above  the  world  of  sense,  would  be  the  right 
expression.  Christian  ethics,  as  distinguished 
from  dogma,  are  not  supernatural ;  they  are 
drawn  from,  and  adapted  to,  human  nature. 

It  is  disappointing  to  find  that  a  theorist 
who  makes  everything  depend  on  the  in- 
fluence of  religion  should  not  have  attempted 
to  ascertain  precisely  what  religion  is  and  what 
is  its  origin,  or  to  distinguish  from  each  other 


GUESSES  AT  THE  RIDDLE  OF  EXISTENCE     29 

the  widely  diverse  phenomena  which  bear  the 
name.  His  sanction  itself  calls  for  a  sanction 
and  calls  in  vain. 

When  a  hypothesis  will  not  bear  inspection 
in  itself,  time  is  wasted  in  applying  it,  or  test- 
ing its  applications,  to  history.  But  Mr.  Kidd 
says  of  the  first  fourteen  centuries  after  Christ: 

"  So  far,  fourteen  centuries  of  the  history  of  our  civiliza- 
tion had  been  devoted  to  the  growth  and  development  of 
a  stupendous  system  of  other-worldliness.  The  conflict 
against  reason  had  been  successful  to  a  degree  never  be- 
fore equalled  in  the  history  of  the  world.  The  super- 
rational  sanction  of  conduct  had  attained  a  strength  and 
universality  unknown  in  the  Roman  and  Greek  civiliza- 
tions. The  State  was  a  divine  institution.  The  ruler 
held  his  place  by  divine  right,  and  every  political  office 
and  all  subsidiary  power  issued  from  him  in  virtue  of  the 
same  authority.  Every  consideration  of  the  present  was 
over-shadowed  in  men's  minds  by  conceptions  of  a  future 
life,  and  the  whole  social  and  political  system  and  the  in- 
dividual lives  of  men  had  become  profoundly  tinged  with 
the  prevailing  ideas." 

Of  all  the  actions  by  which  mediaeval 
civilization  was  moulded  and  advanced,  what 
percentage  does  Mr.  Kidd  suppose  to  have 
been  performed  under  religious  influence  or 
from  a  spiritual  motive?  How  many  feudal 


30      GUESSES  AT  THE  RIDDLE  OF  EXISTENCE 

kings  and  lords  —  how  many,  even,  of  the 
ecclesiastical  statesmen  of  the  Middle  Ages  — 
does  he  suppose  to  have  been  carrying  on  a 
conflict  with  reason  for  objects  other  than 
worldly  and  under  the  inspiration  of  divine 
right?  How  much  resemblance  to  the 
character  of  the  Author  of  Christianity 
would  he  have  found  among  the  rulers  and 
the  active  spirits  of  the  community  or  even 
of  the  Church  ?  How  much  among  the  occu- 
pants of  the  Papal  throne  itself? 

Other  critics  have  pointed  out  that  Mr. 
Kidd,  to  say  the  least,  overstates  his  case  in 
saying  that  Christianity  was  directly  opposed 
by  all  the  intellectual  forces  of  the  time.  So 
close  was  the  affinity  of  Roman  Stoicism  to 
it  that  one  eminent  French  writer  has  under- 
taken to  demonstrate  the  influence  of  Chris- 
tianity on  the  writings  of  the  Roman  Stoics. 
It  had  intellectual  champions  as  soon  as  it 
had  intellectual  assailants,  and  their  arguments 
were  addressed  to  reason.  The  pessimistic 
melancholy  of  a  falling  empire  and  the  revolt 
from  a  decrepit  polytheism  were  also  intel- 
lectual or  partly  intellectual  forces  on  its  side. 


GUESSES  AT  THE  RIDDLE  OF  EXISTENCE     31 

In  the  recent  concessions  of  political  power 
by  the  upper  classes  to  the  masses,  Mr.  Kidd 
finds  an  example  of  altruism  prevailing  over 
reason.  That  something  has  in  the  course 
of  this  revolution  occasionally  prevailed  over 
reason  might  be  very  plausibly  maintained. 
Whether  it  was  anything  supernatural  or  ex- 
tra-rational seems  very  doubtful.  In  Great 
Britain,  for  instance,  the  extension  of  the 
franchise  in  1832  was  the  result  of  a  conflict 
between  classes  and  parties  carried  on  in  a 
spirit  as  far  as  possible  from  altruistic  and 
pushed  to  the  very  verge  of  civil  war.  After- 
wards, the  Whig  leader,  finding  himself  politi- 
cally becalmed,  brought  in  a  new  Reform  Bill 
to  raise  the  wind,  and  was  outbid  by  Derby 
and  Disraeli,  whose  avowed  object  was  to 
"dish  the  Whigs."  Of  altruistic  self-sacrifice 
it  would  be  difficult  in  the  whole  process  to 
find  much  trace. 

If  this  branch  of  the  inquiry  were  to  be 
pursued,  it  might  be  worth  while  for  Mr.  Kidd 
to  consider  the  case  of  Japan,  the  progress  of 
which  of  late  has  been  so  marvellously  rapid. 
It  appears  that  in  Japan,  while  the  lower 


32      OUESSES  AT  THE  RIDDLE  OF  EXISTENCE 

classes  have  a  superstition  at  once  very  gross 
and  very  feeble,  the  upper  classes,  by  whom 
the  movement  has  been  initiated  and  carried 
forward,  have  no  genuine  religion,  but  at  most 
official  forms,  such  as  could  not  sustain  action 
against  self-interest. 

The  cause  of  human  progress  has  been  the 
desire  of  man  to  improve  his  condition,  ever 
mounting  as,  with  the  success  of  his  efforts, 
fresh  possibilities  of  improvement  were  brought 
within  his  view.  It  is  in  this  respect  he  spe- 
cially differs  from  the  brutes.  Mechanical  evo- 
lution and  selection  by  mere  struggle  for  exist- 
ence apply  to  man  in  his  rudimentary  state  or 
in  his  character  as  an  animal.  Of  humanity, 
desire  of  improvement  is  the  motive  power. 
There  is  no  need,  therefore,  of  importing  the 
language,  fast  becoming  a  jargon,  of  evolution 
into  our  general  treatment  of  history.  Bees, 
ants,  and  beavers  are  marvels  of  nature  in 
their  way.  But  they  show  no  desire  for  im- 
provement, and  make  no  effort  to  improve. 
Man  alone  aspires.  The  aspiration  is  weak  in 
the  lower  races  of  men,  strong  in  the  higher. 
Of  its  existence  and  of  the  different  degrees 


GUESSES  AT  THE  RIDDLE  OF  EXISTENCE     33 

in  which  it  exists,  science  may  be  able  to  give 
an  account.  But  it  certainly  is  not  the  off- 
spring of  unreason,  nor  can  it  be  aided  in  any 
way  by  superstition  or  by  any  rejection  of  truth. 

A  work  on  the  foundations  of  religious  be- 
lief by  the  leader  of  a  party  in  the  British 
House  of  Commons,  who  is  by  some  marked 
out  as  a  future  Prime  Minister,  shows,  like 
the  theological  and  cosmogonical  essays  of 
Mr.  Gladstone,  the  increasing  interest  felt 
about  these  problems,  not  only  by  divines  and 
philosophers,  but  by  men  of  the  world.  In 
Mr.  Balfour's  case  the  union  of  speculation 
with  politics  is  the  more  striking,  inasmuch 
as  his  work  is  one  of  abstruse  philosophy.  It 
is  by  metaphysical  arguments  that  he  under- 
takes to  overthrow  systems  opposed  to  reli- 
gion, and  to  rebuild  the  dilapidated  edifice  on 
new  and  surer  foundations.  He  is  thus  tread- 
ing in  the  steps  of  Coleridge,  the  great  reli- 
gious philosopher  of  the  English  Church.  It 
is  to  a  limited  circle  of  readers  that  he  appeals. 
Ordinary  minds  find  metaphysics  "  out  of 
their  welkin,"  to  use  the  words  of  the  Clown 


34      GUESSES  AT  THE  RIDDLE  OF  EXISTENCE 

in  Twelfth  Night.  They  venerate  from  afar  a 
study  which  has  engaged  and  still  engages  the 
attention  of  powerful  intellects.  But  they  are 
themselves  lost  in  the  region  in  which  "tran- 
scendental solipsism"  has  its  home.  They 
are  unable  to  see  at  what  definitive  conclu- 
sions, still  more,  at  what  practical  conclusions, 
such  as  might  influence  conduct,  philosophy 
has  arrived.  Metaphysic  seems  to  them  to  be 
in  a  perpetual  state  of  flux.  "The  theories 
of  the  great  metaphysicians  of  the  past,"  Mr. 
Balf our  says,  "  are  no  concern  of  ours."  They 
would  surely  concern  us,  however,  if,  like  suc- 
cessive schools  of  science,  they  had  made  some 
real  discoveries  and  left  something  substantial 
behind  them.  But  as  Mr.  Balfour  plaintively 
tells  us,  the  system  of  Plato,  notwithstanding 
the  beauty  of  its  literary  vesture,  has  no  effect- 
ual vitality;  our  debts  to  Aristotle,  though 
immense,  "do  not  include  a  tenable  theory 
of  the  universe " ;  in  the  Stoic  metaphysics 
"nobody  takes  any  interest."  The  Neo-Pla- 
tonists  were  mystics,  and  in  mysticism  Mr. 
Balfour  recognizes  an  undying  element  of  hu- 
man thought,  but  "nobody  is  concerned  about 


GUESSES  AT  THE  RIDDLE  OF  EXISTENCE     35 

their  hierarchy  of  beings  connecting  through 
infinite  gradations  the  Absolute  at  one  end 
of  the  scale  with  matter  at  the  other."  The 
metaphysics  of  Descartes  "are  not  more  liv- 
ing than  his  physics  " ;  neither  "  his  two  sub- 
stances, nor  the  single  substance  of  Spinoza, 
nor  the  innumerable  substances  of  Leibnitz 
satisfy  the  searcher  after  truth."  Had  these 
several  systems  been  investigations  of  matters 
in  which  real  discovery  was  possible,  each  of 
them  surely  would  have  discovered  something, 
and  a  certain  interest  in  each  of  them  would 
remain.  But  they  have  flitted  like  a  series 
of  dreams,  or  a  succession  of  kaleidoscopic 
variations.  Mr.  Balfour  doubts  "whether  any 
metaphysical  philosopher  before  Kant  can  be 
said  to  have  made  contributions  to  this  sub- 
ject [a  theory  of  nature]  which  at  the  present 
day  need  to  be  taken  into  serious  account," 
and  he  presently  proceeds  to  indicate  that 
"Kant's  doctrines,  even  as  modified  by  his 
successors,  do  not  provide  a  sound  basis  for  an 
epistemology  of  nature."  Mr.  Balfour  seems 
even  to  think  that  philosophy  is  in  some  de- 
gree a  matter  of  national  temperament.  He 


36      OUESSES  AT  THE  RIDDLE  OF  EXISTENCE 

says  that  the  philosophy  of  Kant  and  other 
German  philosophers  will  never  be  thoroughly 
received  so  as  to  form  standards  of  reference 
in  any  English-speaking  community  "  until 
the  ideas  of  these  speculative  giants  are  thor- 
oughly re-thought  by  Englishmen  and  repro- 
duced in  a  shape  which  ordinary  Englishmen 
will  consent  to  assimilate."  "Under  ordinary 
conditions,"  he  says,  "philosophy  cannot,  like 
science,  become  international."  This  seems 
as  much  as  saying  that  philosophy  is  still  not 
a  department  of  science,  or  a  real  investiga- 
tion resulting  in  truths  evident  to  all  the 
world  alike,  but  a  mode  of  looking  at  things 
which  may  vary  with  national  peculiarities 
of  mind  and  character. 

Locke,  as  Mr.  Balfour  reminds  us,  toward 
the  end  of  his  great  work  assures  his  readers 
that  he  "  suspects  that  natural  philosophy  is 
not  capable  of  being  made  science,"  and 
serenely  draws  from  his  admissions  the  moral 
that  "  as  we  are  so  little  fitted  to  frame  theo- 
ries about  this  present  world  we  had  better 
devote  our  energies  to  preparing  for  the  next." 
Perhaps  we  might  amend  the  suggestion  by 


OUESSES  AT  THE  RIDDLE  OF  EXISTENCE     37 

saying  that  most  of  us  had  better  devote  our 
energies  to  the  search  for  attainable  truth  and 
to  the  improvement  of  our  character  and  es- 
tate in  this  world  as  a  preparation  for  the 
world  to  come.  A  man  so  metaphysical  in 
his  cast  as  Emerson  is  obliged  to  say  that 
we  know  nothing  of  nature  or  of  ourselves, 
and  that  man  has  not  "  taken  one  step  towards 
the  solution  of  the  problem  of  his  destiny." 

Before  the  relation  of  mind  and  body  had 
been  proved,  and  while  the  mind  was  sup- 
posed to  have  a  divine  origin  of  its  own  and 
to  be  a  sojourner  in  the  body  as  a  temporary 
home  or  prison-house,  it  was  perhaps  easier  to 
believe,  as  did  the  mediaeval  philosophers,  that 
in  the  mind  there  was  a  source  of  knowledge 
about  the  universe  apart  from  the  perceptions 
of  sense,  and  that  the  world  might  be  studied, 
not  by  observation,  but  by  introspection,  and 
even  through  the  analysis  of  language  as  the 
embodiment  of  ideas.  Transcendental  Solip- 
sism and  a  world  constructed  out  of  catego- 
ries, would,  under  those  conditions,  have  their 
day.  Something  of  the  mediaeval  disposition 
seems  to  lurk  in  the  effort  to  demonstrate 


38      GUESSES  AT  THE  RIDDLE  OF  EXISTENCE 

that  the  material  world  has  no  existence  apart 
from  our  perceptions.  Be  this  true  or  not,  it 
can  make  little  difference  in  our  theological  or 
spiritual  position.  The  fact  must  be  the  same 
in  the  case  of  a  dog  as  in  the  case  of  a  man. 
Most  of  us,  therefore,  will  be  content  to 
look  on  while  Mr.  Balfour's  metaphysical 
blade,  flashing  to  the  right  and  left,  disposes 
of  "  Naturalism "  on  the  one  hand  and  of 
Transcendentalism  on  the  other.  We  have 
only  to  put  in  a  gentle  caveat  against  any 
idea  of  driving  the  world  back  through  gen- 
eral scepticism  to  faith.  Scepticism,  not  only 
general,  but  universal,  is  more  likely  to  be 
the  ultimate  result,  and  any  faith  which  is 
not  spontaneous,  whether  it  be  begotten  of 
ecclesiastical  pressure  or  intellectual  despair, 
is,  and  in  the  end  will  show  itself  to  be, 
merely  veiled  unbelief.  The  catastrophe  of 
Dean  Mansel,  who,  while  he  was  trying  in 
the  interest  of  orthodoxy,  to  cut  the  ground 
from  under  the  feet  of  the  Rationalist,  him- 
self inadvertently  demonstrated  the  impossi- 
bility of  believing  in  God,  was  an  awful 
warning  to  the  polemical  tactician. 


OUESSES  AT  THE  RIDDLE  OF  EXISTENCE     39 

Mr.  Balfour  gets  on  more  practical  ground 
and  comes  more  within  the  range  of  general 
interest  when  he  proceeds  to  set  up  authority 
apart  from  reason  as  a  foundation  of  theologi- 
cal belief.  Above  reason  authority  must  ap- 
parently be  if  it  is  apart  from  it,  for  wherever 
authority  has  established  itself  reason  must 
give  way,  while  it  has  no  means  of  constrain- 
ing the  submission  of  authority.  No  one  could 
be  less  inclined  to  presumptuous  rationalism 
than  Butler,  who,  in  his  work,  which  though 
in  partial  ruin  is  still  great,  with  noble  frank- 
ness accepts  reason  as  our  only  guide  to  truth. 
In  combating  the  objections  against  the  evi- 
dences of  Christianity,  Butler  says  that  "  he 
expresses  himself  with  caution  lest  he  should 
be  mistaken  to  vilify  reason,  which  is  indeed 
the  only  faculty  we  have  to  judge  concerning 
anything,  even  revelation."  What  is  defer- 
ence to  authority  but  the  deference  to  su- 
perior knowledge  or  wisdom  which  reason 
pays,  and  which,  if  its  grounds,  intellectual 
or  moral,  fail  or  become  doubtful,  reason  will 
withdraw?  This  is  just  as  true  with  regard 
to  the  authority  of  tradition  as  with  regard 


40      GUESSES  AT  THE  RIDDLE  OF  EXISTENCE 

to  that  of  a  living  informant  or  adviser  ;  just 
as  true  with  regard  to  the  authority  of  a 
Church  as  with  regard  to  that  of  an  individ- 
ual teacher  or  guide.  Authority,  Mr.  Bal- 
four  says,  as  the  term  is  used  by  him,  "  is  in 
all  cases  contrasted  with  reason  and  stands 
for  that  group  of  non-rational  causes,  moral, 
social,  and  educational,  which  produces  its 
results  by  psychic  processes  other  than  rea- 
son." A  writer  may  affix  to  a  term  any  sense 
he  pleases  for  his  personal  convenience  ;  but 
the  reasoning  of  the  psychic  process  of  defer- 
ence to  authority,  though  undeveloped,  and, 
perhaps,  till  it  is  challenged,  unconscious, 
whether  its  cause  be  moral,  social,  or  edu- 
cational, is  capable  of  being  presented  in  a 
rational  form,  and  cannot,  therefore,  be  rightly 
called  non-rational.  There  is,  of  course,  a  sort 
of  authority,  so  styled,  which  impresses  itself 
by  means  other  than  rational,  such  as  religious 
persecution,  priestly  thaumaturgy,  spiritual  ter- 
rorism, or  social  tyranny.  But  in  this  Mr. 
Balfour,  would  not  recognize  a  source  of  truth 
or  foundation  of  theological  belief.  A  phi- 
losopher who  proposes  to  rebuild  theology, 


GUESSES  AT  THE  RIDDLE  OF  EXISTENCE     41 

wholly  or  in  part,  on  the  basis  of  authority, 
seems  bound  to  provide  us  with  some  analy- 
sis of  authority  itself,  and  some  test  by  which 
genuine  authority  may  be  distinguished  from 
ancient  and  venerable  imposture.  Papal  in- 
fallibility, which  Mr.  Balfour  cites  as  an 
instance,  does  undoubtedly  postulate  the  sub- 
mission of  reason  to  authority ;  but  it  proved 
the  necessity  of  that  submission  by  the  exter- 
mination of  the  Albigenses  and  the  holocausts 
of  the  Inquisition.  It  is  still  ready,  as  its 
Encyclical  and  Syllabus  intimate,  to  sustain 
the  demonstration  by  the  help  of  the  secular 
arm. 

So  in  the  case  of  habit.  Our  common  actions 
have  no  doubt  become  by  use  automatic,  as  our 
common  beliefs  are  accepted  without  investiga- 
tion. But  if  they  are  challenged,  reasons  for 
them  can  be  given.  A  man  eats  without  think- 
ing, but  if  he  is  called  upon,  he  can  give  a  good 
reason  for  taking  food.  A  soldier  obeys  the 
word  of  command  mechanically,  but  if  he  were 
called  upon,  he  could  give  a  good  reason  for  his 
obedience. 

Mr.  Balfour  scarcely  lets   us   see   distinctly 


42      GUESSES  AT  THE  RIDDLE  OF  EXISTENCE 

what  is  his  view  of  belief  in  miracles,  which 
must  play  an  important  part  in  any  reconstruc- 
tion or  review  of  the  basis  of  theology;  an  all- 
important  part,  indeed,  if  Paley  was  right  in 
saying,  as  he  did  in  reply  to  Hume,  that  there 
was  no  way  other  than  miracle  by  which  God 
could  be  revealed.  He  seems  inclined  to  repre- 
sent the  objections  to  them  as  philosophical 
rather  than  historical,  and  such  as  a  sounder 
philosophy  may  dissipate,  intimating  that  ra- 
tionalists have  approached  the  inquiry  with  a 
predetermination  "to  force  the  testimony  of 
existing  records  into  conformity  with  theories 
on  the  truth  or  falsity  of  which  it  is  for  phi- 
losophy not  history  to  pronounce."  This  might 
be  said  with  some  justice  of  Strauss's  first  Life 
of  Jesus,  and  perhaps  of  some  other  German 
philosophies  of  the  Gospel  history.  But  the 
current  objections  to  miracles,  with  which  a 
theologian  has  to  deal,  are  clearly  of  a  historical 
kind.  A  miracle  is  an  argument  addressed 
through  the  sense  to  the  understanding,  which 
pronounces  that  the  thing  done  is  supernatural 
and  proof  of  the  intervention  of  a  higher  power. 
It  seems  inconceivable,  if  the  salvation  of  the 


OUESSES  AT  THE  RIDDLE  OF  EXISTENCE     43 

world  were  to  depend  on  belief  in  miracles, 
that  Providence  should  have  failed  to  provide 
records  for  the  assurance  of  those  who  were 
not  eye-witnesses  equal  in  certainty  to  the  evi- 
dence afforded  eye-witnesses  by  sense.  Are 
the  records  of  the  miracles  which  we  possess 
unquestionably  authentic  and  contemporane- 
ous ?  Were  the  reporters  beyond  all  suspicion, 
not  only  of  deceit,  but  of  innocent  self-delusion  ? 
Were  they,  looking  to  the  circumstances  of 
their  time  and  their  education,  likely  to  be  duly 
critical  in  their  examination  of  the  case  ?  Is 
there  anything  in  the  internal  character  of  the 
miracles  themselves,  the  demoniac  miracles  for 
example,  to  move  suspicion,  it  being  impossible 
to  think  that  Providence  would  allow  indispen- 
sable evidences  of  vital  truth  to  be  stamped 
with  the  marks  of  falsehood  ?  What  is  the 
weight  of  the  adverse  evidence  derived  from 
the  silence  of  external  history  and  the  apparent 
absence  of  the  impression  which  might  have 
been  expected  to  be  made  by  prodigies  such  as 
miraculous  darkness  and  the  rising  of  the  dead 
out  of  their  graves  ?  These  questions,  daily 
pressed  upon  us  by  scepticism,  are  strictly 


44      GUESSES  AT  THE  RIDDLE  OF  EXISTENCE 

historical,  and  will  have  to  be  treated  by 
restorers  of  theological  belief  on  strictly  histori- 
cal grounds. 

Mr.  Balf our  recognizes  mysticism  as  an  "  un- 
dying element  in  human  thought."  That  it  is 
not  yet  dead  is  evident.  Minds  not  a  few  have 
taken  refuge  in  various  forms  of  it.  But  un- 
dying it  surely  is  not.  The  mystic,  however 
exalted,  merely  imposes  on  himself.  He  creates 
by  a  subtle  sophistication  of  his  own  mind  the 
cloudy  object  of  his  faith  and  worship.  He  has 
himself  written  his  Book  of  Mormon,  and  hid- 
den it  where  he  finds  it.  In  that  direction 
there  can  be  no  hope  of  laying  the  foundation 
of  a  new  theological  belief. 

There  can  be  no  hope,  apparently,  of  laying 
new  foundations  for  a  rational  theology  in  any 
direction  excepting  that  of  the  study  of  the 
universe  and  of  humanity  as  manifestations  of 
the  supreme  power  in  that  spirit  of  thorough- 
going intellectual  honesty  of  which  Huxley, 
who  has  just  been  taken  from  us,  is  truly  said 
to  have  been  an  illustrious  example.  That  we 
are  made  and  intended  to  pursue  knowledge  is 
as  certain  as  that  we  are  made  and  intended  to 


GUESSES  AT  THE  RIDDLE  OF  EXISTENCE     46 

strive  for  the  improvement  of  our  estate,  and 
we  cannot  tell  how  far  or  to  what  revelations 
the  pursuit  may  lead  us.  If  Revelation  is 
lost,  Manifestation  remains,  arid  great  mani- 
festations appear  to  be  openiug  on  our  view. 
Agnosticism  is  right,  if  it  is  a  counsel  of 
honesty,  but  ought  not  to  be  heard  if  it  is  a 
counsel  of  despair. 


THE   CHURCH   AND   THE   OLD 
TESTAMENT 


THE   CHURCH   AND   THE   OLD 
TESTAMENT 

AT  the  English  Church  Congress  held  in 
1895  at  Norwich,  Professor  Bonney,  Canon  of 
Manchester,  made  a  bold  and  honourable  at- 
tempt to  cast  a  millstone  off  the  neck  of  Chris- 
tianity by  frankly  renouncing  belief  in  the 
historical  character  of  the  earlier  books  of  the 
Bible. 

"  I  cannot  deny,"  he  said,  "  that  the  increase 
of  scientific  knowledge  has  deprived  parts  of 
the  earlier  books  of  the  Bible  of  the  historical 
value  which  was  generally  attributed  to  them 
by  our  forefathers.  The  story  of  the  creation 
in  Genesis,  unless  we  play  fast  and  loose  either 
with  words  or  with  science,  cannot  be  brought 
into  harmony  with  what  we  have  learned  from 
geology.  Its  ethnological  statements  are  im- 
perfect, if  not  sometimes  inaccurate.  The 
stories  of  the  flood  and  of  the  Tower  of  Babel 
B  49 


50      THE  CHURCH  AND   THE  OLD   TESTAMENT 

are  incredible  in  their  present  form.  Some  his- 
torical element  may  underlie  many  of  the  tradi- 
tions in  the  first  eleven  chapters  of  that  book, 
but  this  we  cannot  hope  to  recover." 

With  the  historical  character  of  the  chapters 
relating  to  the  creation,  Canon  Bonney  must 
resign  his  belief  in  the  Fall  of  Adam  ;  with  his 
belief  in  the  Fall  of  Adam  he  must  surrender 
the  doctrine  of  the  Atonement,  as  connected 
with  that  event,  and  thus  relieve  conscience  of 
the  strain  put  upon  it  in  struggling  to  recon- 
cile vicarious  punishment  with  our  sense  of 
justice.  He  will  also  have  to  lay  aside  his 
belief  in  the  Serpent  of  the  Temptation,  and  in 
the  primeval  personality  of  Evil. 

In  Lux  Mundi,  a  collection  of  essays  edited 
by  the  Reverend  Principal  of  Pusey  House, 
and  understood  to  emanate  from  the  High 
Church  quarter,  we  find  plain  indications  that 
the  unhistoric  character,  so  frankly  recognized 
by  the  learned  Canon  in  the  opening  chapters 
of  Genesis,  is  recognized  in  other  parts  of  Old 
Testament  history  by  High  Churchmen,  who, 
having  studied  recent  criticism,  feel  like  the 
Canon,  that  there  is  a  millstone  to  be  cast  off. 


THE  CHURCH  AND   THE  OLD   TESTAMENT     51 

One  of  these  essayists  admits  that  the  "battle 
of  historical  record  cannot  be  fought  on  the 
field  of  the  Old  Testament  as  it  can  on  that  of 
the  New "  ;  that  "  very  little  of  the  early 
record  can  be  securely  traced  to  a  period  near 
the  events";  and  that  "the  Church  cannot 
insist  upon  the  historical  character  of  the  earli- 
est records  of  the  ancient  church  in  detail  as 
she  can  on  the  historical  character  of  the  Gos- 
pels or  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles."  The  same 
writer  seems  ready  to  entertain  the  view  that 
the  "books  of  Chronicles  represent  a  later 
and  less  historical  version  of  Israel's  history 
than  that  given  in  Samuel  and  Kings,"  and  that 
they  "  represent  the  version  of  that  history  which 
had  become  current  in  the  priestly  schools." 
"  Conscious  perversion "  he  will  not  acknow- 
ledge, but  in  the  theory  of  "  unconscious  idealiz- 
ing" of  history  he  is  willing,  apparently,  to 
acquiesce.  Inspiration,  he  thinks,  is  consistent 
with  this  sort  of  "idealizing,"  though  it 
excludes  conscious  deception  or  pious  fraud. 
Conscious  deception  or  pious  fraud  no  large- 
minded  and  instructed  critic  of  primeval  records 
would  be  inclined  to  charge.  But  "ideal"  is 


52      THE  CHURCH  AND   THE  OLD   TESTAMENT 

apparently  only  another  name  for  "  mythical," 
and  it  is  difficult  to  see  how  myths  can  in  any 
sense  be  inspired,  or  why,  if  the  records  are  in 
any  sense  inspired,  the  Church  should  not  be 
able  to  insist  on  their  historical  character.  "  In 
detail "  is  a  saving  expression  ;  but  the  details 
make  up  the  history,  and  if  the  truth  of  the 
details  cannot  be  guaranteed,  what  is  our  guar- 
antee for  the  truth  of  the  whole  ?  Human  testi- 
mony, no  doubt,  may  sometimes  fail  in  minor 
particulars,  while  in  the  main  account  of  the 
matter  it  is  true.  But  is  it  conceivable  that 
the  Holy  Spirit,  in  dictating  the  record  of  God's 
dealings  with  mankind  for  our  instruction  in 
the  way  of  life,  should  simulate  the  defects  of 
human  evidence  ? 

A  veil  which  in  all  the  orthodox  Churches 
hung  before  the  eyes  of  free  inquiry  when 
they  were  turned  on  the  origin  and  estate  of 
man  is  removed  by  the  Canon's  renuncia- 
tions. The  present  writer,  as  a  student  at 
college,  attended  the  lectures  of  Dr.  Buck- 
land,  a  pioneer  in  geology;  and  he  remem- 
bers the  desperate  shifts  to  which  the  lecturer 
was  driven  in  his  efforts  to  reconcile  the  facts 


THE  CHURCH  AND   THE  OLD    TESTAMENT     53 

of  his  science  with  the  Mosaic  cosmogony, 
the  literal  truth  of  which  he  did  not  venture 
to  impugn.  By  a  "  day  "  Dr.  Buckland  said, 
Moses  meant  a  geological  period,  though  the 
text  says  that  each  day  was  made  up  of  a 
morning  and  an  evening,  while  the  Deca- 
logue fixes  the  sense  by  enjoining  the  observ- 
ance of  the  seventh  day  as  that  on  which 
the  Creator  rested  after  the  six  days'  labour 
of  creation.  How  the  professor  dealt  with 
fossil  records  of  geological  races  and  the 
appearance  of  death  in  the  world  before  the 
fall  of  man,  the  writer  does  not  now  remem- 
ber. It  is  not  very  long  since  a  preacher 
before  an  educated  audience  could  meet  the 
objection  to  the  Mosaic  deluge  arising  from 
the  position  of  stones  in  the  mountains  of 
Auvergne,  which  such  a  cataclysm  must  have 
swept  away,  by  the  simple  expedient  of  af- 
firming that  when  the  deluge  was  over,  the 
stones  had  been  restored  to  their  places  by 
miracle.  Nay,  were  not  Mr.  Gladstone's  great 
intellectual  powers  the  other  day  exerted  to 
prove  that  the  Creator,  in  dictating  to  Moses 
the  account  of  the  creation,  had  come  won- 


54      THE  CHURCH  AND   THE   OLD   TESTAMENT 

derfully  near  the  scientific  truth  and  almost 
anticipated  the  nebular  hypothesis? 

That  the  Bible  does  not  teach  science  apol- 
ogists are  now  ready  to  proclaim.  But  the 
fact  is  that  it  does  teach  science,  —  cosmo- 
gonical  science  at  least, —  and  that  its  teach- 
ings have  been  disproved. 

From  the  conceptions  of  science,  geocen- 
tricism,  derived  from  the  Mosaic  cosmogony, 
may  have  been  banished,  but  over  those  of 
theology  its  cloud  still  heavily  hangs.  The 
consecrated  impression  has  survived  the  dis- 
tinct belief,  and  faith  shrinks  from  the  theo- 
logical revolution  which  the  abandonment  of 
the  impression  would  involve. 

Faith  takes  refuge  in  the  substitution  of  fig- 
urative and  symbolical  for  literal  truth.  This 
is  Origen  over  again  with  his  system  of  alle- 
gorical interpretation  as  a  universal  solvent  of 
moral  difficulties  in  Scripture.  The  refuge  is 
surely  little  better  than  a  subterfuge.  The 
writer  of  a  primeval  narrative,  unconscious  of 
astronomy,  geology,  or  physiology,  believed  in 
the  literal  truth  of  his  legend.  He  had  no 
idea  of  allegory  or  symbol.  When  he  said 


THE  CHURCH  AND   THE  OLD  TESTAMENT     55 

six  days  of  creation,  he  meant  days  and  not 
aeons.  Paradise,  the  Trees  of  Life  and  Know- 
ledge, the  intercourse  of  God  in  human  form 
with  men,  the  Fall,  the  longevity  of  the  patri- 
archs, the  Noachic  deluge,  the  miraculous  ori- 
gin of  the  rainbow,  were  to  him  literal  facts. 
If  it  was  from  the  Holy  Spirit  that  these 
narratives  emanated,  how  can  the  Holy  Spirit 
have  failed  to  let  mankind  know  that  in  real- 
ity they  were  allegories  ?  How  could  it  allow 
them  to  be  received  as  literal  truths,  to  mis- 
lead the  world  for  ages,  to  bar  the  advance  of 
science,  and,  when  science  at  last  prevailed,  to 
discredit  revelation  by  the  exposure  ?  Besides, 
to  maintain  the  symbolical  truths  of  Genesis, 
is  almost  as  hard  as  to  maintain  its  literal 
truth.  What  symbolical  truth  is  there  in  the 
order  of  creation  now  disproved  by  science,  or 
in  the  description  of  the  cosmic  system  and 
the  relations  of  the  sun  and  moon  to  our 
planet?  What  symbolic  truth  is  there  in  the 
Fall  of  Man,  and  how  does  it  designate  the 
rise  of  man  from  the  brute,  which  science 
shows  him  originally  to  have  been,  to  the  level 
of  civilized  humanity? 


56      THE  CHURCH  AND   THE  OLD   TESTAMENT 

The  history  of  every  nation  begins  with 
myth.  A  primeval  tribe  keeps  no  record,  and 
a  nation  in  its  maturity  has  no  more  recollec- 
tion of  what  happened  in  its  infancy  than  a 
man  of  what  happened  to  him  in  his  cradle. 
It  is  needless  to  say  that  the  first  book  of 
Livy  is  a  tissue  of  fable,  though  the  Romans 
were  great  keepers  of  records  and  very  matter- 
of-fact  as  a  people.  When  the  age  of  reflec- 
tion arrives  and  the  nation  begins  to  speculate 
on  its  origin,  it  gives  itself  a  mythical  founder, 
a  Theseus,  a  Romulus,  or  an  Abraham,  and 
ascribes  to  him  its  ancestral  institutions  or  cus- 
toms. In  his  history  also  are  found  the  keys 
to  immemorial  names  and  the  origin  of  myste- 
rious or  venerated  objects,  the  Ruminal  Fig- 
tree  or  the  tomb  of  Abraham.  It  is  a  rule 
of  criticism  that  we  cannot  by  any  critical 
alembic  extract  materials  for  history  out  of 
fable.  If  the  details  of  a  story  are  fabulous, 
so  is  the  whole.  If  the  details  of  Abraham's 
story  —  the  appearances  of  the  Deity  to  him, 
so  strangely  anthropomorphic,  the  miraculous 
birth  of  his  son  when  his  wife  was  ninety  years 
old,  his  adventures  with  Sarah  in  Egypt  and 


THE  CHURCH  AND   THE  OLD   TESTAMENT     57 

afterwards  in  Gerar,  evidently  two  versions  of 
the  same  legend,  the  sacrifice  of  his  son  ar- 
rested by  the  angel,  with  the  episode  of  Lot, 
the  destruction  of  the  Cities  of  the  Plain,  and 
the  turning  of  Lot's  wife  into  a  pillar  of  salt l 
— are  plainly  unhistorical,  the  whole  story  must 
be  relegated  to  the  domain  of  tribal  fancy. 
We  cannot  make  a  real  personage  out  of  un- 
realities or  fix  a  place  for  him  in  unrecorded 
time. 

That  the  alleged  record  is  of  a  date  posterior 
by  many  centuries  to  the  events,  and  there- 
fore no  record  at  all,  plainly  appears  from  the 
mention  of  Kings  of  Israel  in  Genesis  (xxxvi. 
31).  No  reason  has  been  shown  for  suppos- 
ing that  the  passage  is  an  interpolation,  while 
the  suggestion  that  it  is  prophetic  is  extrava- 
gant. It  stamps  the  date  of  the  book,  like 

1  In  the  case  of  the  metamorphosis  of  Lot's  wife,  we  have 
the  origin  of  the  legend  still  clearly  before  us  in  the  pillars 
or  needles  of  salt,  at  Usdum,  near  the  southwest  corner  of 
the  Dead  Sea,  which  sometimes  bear  a  resemblance  to  the 
human  form.  The  natural  peculiarities  of  the  Dead  Sea 
region  are  pretty  evidently  the  source  of  this  whole  circle 
of  legend.  — See  Andrew  D.  White's  most  interesting  work, 
The  Warfare  of  Science  with  Theology  in  Christendom,  Vol. 
II.,  chap,  xviii. 


58      THE  CHURCH  AND   THE  OLD   TESTAMENT 

the  mention  of  the  death  of  Moses  in  Deu- 
teronomy, to  get  rid  of  which  efforts  equally 
desperate  are  made.  The  words  of  Genesis 
xii.  6,  "the  Canaanite  was  then  in  the  land," 
show  that  the  book  was  written  when  the 
Canaanite  had  long  disappeared,  and  the  words 
of  Deuteronomy  xxxiv.  10,  "  there  arose  not  a 
prophet  in  Israel  since  like  unto  Moses,"  imply 
that  the  book  was  written  after  the  rise  of  a 
line  of  other  prophets.  Moreover  the  writer 
always  speaks  of  Moses  in  the  third  person. 
These  things  were  noticed  by  critics  long  ago, 
but  the  eyes  of  faith,  in  England  and  America 
at  least,  have  been  shut.  The  canon  of  Sir 
George  Cornewall  Lewis,  limiting  the  trust- 
worthiness of  oral  tradition  to  a  single  cen- 
tury, may  be  too  rigid ;  but  we  certainly 
cannot  trust  oral  tradition  for  such  a  period 
as  that  between  the  call  of  Abraham  and  the 
Kings,  especially  when,  the  alleged  events 
being  miraculous,  an  extraordinary  amount  of 
evidence  is  necessary  to  justify  belief. 

The  figure  of  the  patriarch  Abraham,  a  typi- 
cal sheikh,  as  well  as  the  father  of  Israel,  is 
exceptionally  vivid,  and  his  history  is  excep- 


THE  CHURCH  AND   THE  OLD   TESTAMENT     59 

tionally  dramatic.  It  is  needless  to  say  that 
the  narrative  contains  episodes  of  striking 
beauty,  such  as  the  meeting  of  the  steward 
with  Rebekah,  the  scene  of  Hagar  and  her 
child  nearly  perishing  in  the  wilderness,  and 
the  sacrifice  of  Isaac.  But  to  regard  Abra- 
ham as  a  real  founder,  not  only  of  a  nation, 
but  of  the  Church,  and  as  the  chosen  medium 
of  communication  between  God  and  man, 
sound  criticism  will  no  longer  allow  us;  and 
sound  criticism,  like  genuine  science,  is  the 
voice  of  the  Spirit  of  Truth.  A  writer  in 
Lux  Mundi,  already  quoted,  avows  his  belief 
that  "the  modern  development  of  historical 
criticism  is  reaching  results  as  sure,  where 
it  is  fairly  used,  as  scientific  inquiry."  He 
significantly  reminds  churchmen  of  the  warn- 
ing conveyed  by  the  name  of  Galileo.  Why 
should  we  any  longer  cling  to  that  which, 
whatever  it  may  have  been  to  the  men  of  a 
primeval  tribe,  is  to  us  a  low  and  narrow  con- 
ception of  the  Deity?  Why  should  we  force 
ourselves  to  believe  that  a  Being  who  fills 
eternity  and  infinity  became  the  guest  of  a 
Hebrew  sheikh;  entered  into  a  covenant  with 


60      THE  CHURCH  AND   THE  OLD   TESTAMENT 

the  sheikh's  tribe,  to  the  exclusion  of  the  rest 
of  the  human  race ;  and  as  the  seal  of  the 
covenant  ordained  the  perpetuation  of  a  bar- 
barous tribal  rite  ?  There  have  been  bibli- 
olaters so  extreme  as  to  wish  even  converted 
Jews  to  continue  the  practice  to  which  the 
promise  was  mysteriously  annexed.  Tribalism 
may  attach  inordinate  value  to  genealogies 
as  well  as  to  ancestral  rites,  but  can  we  im- 
agine the  Author  of  the  universe  limiting  his 
providential  regard  and  his  communication  of 
vital  truth  to  his  creatures  by  tribal  lines? 
Every  tribe  is  the  chosen  people  of  its  own 
god ;  enjoys  a  monopoly  of  his  favour ;  is  up- 
held by  him  against  the  interest  of  other  na- 
tions, and  especially  protected  by  him  in  war. 
It  is  he  who  gives  it  victory,  and  if  stones 
fall  or  are  hurled  on  the  enemy  retreating 
through  a  rocky  pass,  it  is  he  who  casts  them 
down  (Joshua  x.  11).  Christianity  is  the 
denial  of  Jewish  tribalism,  proclaiming  that 
all  nations  have  been  made  of  one  blood  to 
dwell  together  on  the  earth,  and  are  sharers 
alike  in  the  care  of  Providence.  Of  the  bad 
effects  of  a  conception  of  God  drawn  from  the 


THE  CHURCH  AND   THE  OLD   TESTAMENT     61 

imagination  of  Jewish  tribalism,  the  least  is 
the  waste  of  money  and  effort  in  desperate 
attempts  to  convert  the  Jews. 

Of  the  history  of  the  other  patriarchs  the 
texture  is  apparently  the  same  as  that  of 
the  history  of  Abraham.  They  are  mythical 
fathers  of  a  race,  a  character  which  extends 
to  Ishmael  and  Esau.  In  fact  the  chapters 
relating  to  them  are  full  of  what,  in  an  ordi- 
nary case,  would  be  called  ethnological  myth. 
Of  contemporary  or  anything  like  contem- 
porary record,  even  supposing  the  Pentateuch 
to  have  been  written  by  Moses,  there  can  be 
no  pretence.  It  is  thus  in  the  absence  of 
anything  like  evidence  that  we  have  been 
called  upon  to  accept  such  incidents  as  the 
bodily  wrestling  of  Jehovah  with  Jacob,  and 
the  appearance  to  Jacob  in  a  dream  of  an 
angel  who  is  the  organ  of  a  supernatural  com- 
munication about  the  speckles  of  the  rams  or 
he-goats.  Most  picturesque  and  memorable, 
no  doubt,  are  the  characters  of  Esau,  the  typi- 
cal father  of  the  hunter  tribe,  and  of  Jacob, 
in  whose  unscrupulous  and  successful  cunning 
we  have  a  picture  such  as  the  anti-Semite 


62      THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  OLD   TESTAMENT 

would  now  draw  of  his  enemy,  the  financial 
Jew.  These  chapters  are  full  of  legends  con- 
nected' with  fanciful  interpretations  of  names, 
such  as  Jehovah-Jireh  (Genesis  xxii.  14)  ; 
fanciful  accounts  of  immemorial  monuments, 
such  as  Jacob's  pillar ;  or  of  tribal  customs, 
such  as  that  of  refraining  from  a  particular 
sinew  because  it  had  been  touched  and  made 
to  shrink  by  Jehovah  in  wrestling  with  Jacob. 
Extraordinary  simplicity  is  surely  displayed 
by  the  commentators  who  appeal  to  the 
custom  as  evidence  of  the  historic  event. 

Much  labour  has  been  spent  in  efforts  to 
identify  the  Pharaoh  of  the  Exodus  and  to  fix 
the  date  of  that  event  and  its  connection 
with  Egyptian  history.  Still  more  labour  has 
been  spent  in  tracing  the  route  of  the  Israel- 
ites through  the  wilderness  and  explaining 
away  the  tremendous  difficulties  of  the  narra- 
tive. What  if  the  whole  is  mythical  ?  There 
is  a  famine  in  Palestine.  The  patriarch  sends 
his  ten  sons,  each  with  an  ass  and  a  sack, 
across  the  desert  to  buy  food  in  Egypt.  Pro- 
visions must  have  been  furnished  them  for 
their  journey,  and  of  what  they  bought  they 


THE  CHURCH  AND   THE  OLD   TESTAMENT     63 

must  have  consumed  not  a  little  on  their 
journey  home.  This  seems  improbable,  nor 
was  it  very  likely  that  the  ten  should  strike 
the  exact  place  where  their  brother  Joseph 
was  in  power.  Of  the  poetic  character  of 
the  story  of  Joseph,  with  its  miraculous 
dreams  and  their  interpretations,  there  surely 
can  be  no  doubt.  Yet  upon  the  story  of 
Joseph  and  his  brethren  the  whole  history  of 
the  captivity  in  Egypt  and  the  Exodus  ap- 
parently hangs.  We  might  almost  renounce 
the  task  of  analyzing  the  rest  of  the  nar- 
rative— the  attempt  of  the  Egyptian  rulers 
to  extirpate  the  Hebrews  by  the  strange  com- 
mand to  the  midwives  when  they  might  have 
taken  a  shorter  and  surer  course  ;  the  contest 
in  thaumaturgy  between  the  magicians  of 
Jehovah  and  those  of  Egypt ;  the  plagues 
sent  upon  the  helpless  people  of  Egypt  to 
make  their  ruler  do  that  which  Omnipotence 
might  at  once  have  done  by  its  fiat ;  the  ex- 
traordinary multiplication  of  the  Hebrews, 
whose  adult  males,  in  spite  of  the  destruction 
of  their  male  children,  amount  to  six  hundred 
thousand,  a  number  which  implies  a  total 


64      THE  CHURCH  AND   THE  OLD   TESTAMENT 

population  of  more  than  two  millions  ;  their 
sudden  appearance  as  an  armed  host  though 
they  had  just  been  represented  as  the  unresist- 
ing bondsmen  of  the  Egyptians  ;  their  wander- 
ings for  forty  years  within  the  narrow  limits 
of  the  Sinaitic  peninsula,  where,  though  the 
region  is  desert,  they  find  food  and  water 
not  only  for  themselves  but  for  their  innu- 
merable flocks  and  herds  ;  their  construction 
of  a  sumptuous  tabernacle  where  materials 
or  artificers  for  it  could  not  have  been 
found ;  the  plague  of  fiery  serpents  which 
was  sent  among  them  and  the  brazen  serpent 
by  looking  on  which  they  were  healed  ;  the 
miraculous  destruction  of  the  impious  oppo- 
nents of  an  exclusive  priesthood  ;  the  giants 
of  Canaan ;  the  victories  gained  over  native 
tribes  by  the  direct  interposition  of  Heaven  ; 
the  strange  episode  of  Balaam  and  his  collo- 
quy with  his  ass  ;  the  stopping  of  the  sun 
and  moon  that  Israel  might  have  time  for 
the  pursuit  and  slaughter  of  his  enemies. 
This  last  incident  alone  seems  enough  to 
stamp  the  legendary  character  of  the  whole. 
In  vain  we  attempt  to  reduce  the  miracle, 


THE  CHURCH  AND   THE  OLD   TESTAMENT     65 

which  would  imply  a  disturbance  of  the 
entire  solar  system,  to  a  mere  prolongation  of 
the  daylight.  The  Old  Testament  is  al- 
together geocentric,  and  not  merely  in  the 
phenomenal  sense.  The  sun  and  moon  are 
made  "for  lights  in  the  firmament  of  the 
heaven  to  give  light  on  the  earth,"  and  with 
them  is  coupled  the  creation  of  the  stars. 
The  writer  of  the  book  of  Joshua  cites  the 
book  of  Jasher  as  evidence  of  the  miracle. 
Was  the  book  of  Jasher  inspired?  Could  an 
inspired  writer  need  or  rest  on  the  evidence 
of  one  who  was  uninspired? 

Whether  any  sojourn  of  the  Hebrews  in 
Egypt  or  any  real  connection  with  that  coun- 
try is  denoted  by  the  visit  of  Abraham  to 
Egypt  and  afterwards  by  the  story  of  the 
Exodus,  it  is  for  Egyptologists  to  determine. 
Nothing  certainly  Egyptian  seems  to  be 
traceable  in  Hebrew  beliefs  or  institutions. 
Of  the  appearance  of  Hebrew  forms  on  Egyp- 
tian monuments,  Egyptian  conquest  would 
appear  to  give  a  sufficient  explanation.  The 
history  of  the  Exodus  is  connected  with  the 
account  of  the  institution  of  the  Passover, 


66      THE  CHURCH  AND   THE  OLD   TESTAMENT 

and  analogy  may  lead  us  to  surmise  that 
national  imagination  has  been  busy  in  explain- 
ing the  origin  of  an  immemorial  rite. 

As  to  the  date  and  sources  of  the  Penta- 
teuch and  the  other  historical  books  there  is 
a  flux  of  learned  hypothesis.  But  the  ques- 
tions of  what  documentary  materials  a  book 
was  composed,  and  whether  it  was  composed 
in  the  reign  of  Josiah  or  at  the  time  of  the 
captivity,  do  not  concern  us  here.  It  is 
enough  that  the  book  has  no  pretension  to 
authenticity  or  to  a  date  within  many  cen- 
turies of  the  events.  Let  it  be  observed  that 
the  Church  still  tenders  the  Pentateuch  to  the 
people  as  the  books  of  Moses,  though  a 
learned  churchman  will  now  hardly  be  found 
to  maintain  that  Moses  was  the  writer. 

We  are,  then,  in  no  way  bound  to  believe 
that  God  so  identified  himself  with  a  fa- 
voured tribe  as  to  license  it  to  invade  a  num- 
ber of  other  tribes  which  had  done  it  no 
wrong,  to  slaughter  them  and  take  possession 
of  their  land.  We  are  in  no  way  bound  to 
believe  that  he,  by  the  mouth  of  Moses,  re- 
buked his  chosen  people  for  saving  alive  the 


THE  CHURCH  AND   THE  OLD   TESTAMENT     67 

women  and  children  of  the  Midianites  and 
bade  them  kill  every  male  among  the  little 
ones  and  every  woman  that  had  known  man 
(Numbers  xxxi.  17) ;  or  that  he  commanded 
them  to  slay,  not  only  man,  woman,  and 
child,  but  the  dumb  animals,  everything  that 
breathed,  in  a  captured  city.  To  the  objec- 
tions raised  by  humanity  against  the  slaughter 
of  the  Canaanites,  Christian  apologists  have 
made  various  and,  as  one  of  their  number 
admits,  not  very  consistent  replies.  While 
Bishop  Butler  holds  that  divine  command  in 
itself  constituted  morality,  Mozley,  the  But- 
ler of  our  day,  holds  that  the  divine  command 
could  not  constitute  morality  had  not  the 
general  morality  of  the  people  been  on  that 
level.  Some  say  that  in  conquering  Canaan 
the  Israelites  did  but  recover  their  own,  a 
plea  which,  even  if  it  had  not  been  ousted 
by  prescription,  would  be  totally  inconsistent 
with  the  account  of  the  sojourning  of  Abra- 
ham and  of  his  purchase  of  a  plot  of  land. 
Others  maintain  that,  having  been  driven  by 
force  from  Egypt,  they  had  a  right  to  help 
themselves  to  a  home  where  they  could  find 


68      THE  CHURCH  AND   THE  OLD   TESTAMENT 

it,  and  to  put  all  the  existing  inhabitants  to 
the  sword.  The  bequest  of  Noah  is  also 
pleaded.  But  at  last  the  apologist  has  to 
fall  back  upon  the  simple  command  of  the 
Almighty,  which  is  justified  on  the  ground 
that  the  Canaanites  were  idolaters,  they  never 
having  heard  of  the  true  God. 

Such  examples  as  the  slaughter  of  the 
Canaanites,  the  killing  of  Sisera,  the  assassi- 
nation of  Eglon,  the  hewing  of  Agag  in 
pieces  by  Samuel  before  the  Lord,  Elijah's 
massacre  of  the  prophets  of  Baal,  the  hang- 
ing of  Haman  with  his  ten  sons  commem- 
orated in  the  hideous  feast  of  Purim,  have, 
it  is  needless  to  say,  had  a  deplorable  effect 
in  forming  the  harsher  and  darker  parts  of 
the  character  which  calls  itself  Christian. 
They  are  responsible  in  no  small  degree  for 
murderous  persecutions,  and  for  the  extirpa- 
tion or  oppression  of  heathen  races.  The  dark 
side  of  the  Puritan  character  in  particular  is 
traceable  to  their  influence.  Macaulay  men- 
tions a  fanatical  Scotch  Calvinist  whose  writ- 
ings, he  says,  hardly  bear  a  trace  of  acquaint- 
ance with  the  New  Testament.  Scotch  Cal- 


THE  CHURCH  AND   THE  OLD   TESTAMENT     69 

vinism  itself  has  in  fact  ethically  in  it  not  a 
little  of  the  Old  Testament. 

Jael,  when  she  decoyed  her  husband's  ally 
into  her  tent  and  slew  him  while  he  was  rest- 
ing trustfully  beneath  it,  broke  in  the  most 
signal  manner  the  sacred  rule  of  Arab  hospi- 
tality, as  well  as  the  ordinary  moral  law. 
The  comment  of  orthodoxy  upon  this  is :  "  If 
we  can  overlook  the  treachery  and  violence 
which  belong  to  the  age  and  country,  and 
bear  in  mind  Jael's  ardent  sympathies  with 
the  oppressed  people  of  God,  her  faith  in  the 
right  of  Israel  to  possess  the  land  in  which 
they  were  now  slaves,  her  zeal  for  the  glory 
of  Jehovah  as  against  the  gods  of  Canaan,  and 
the  heroic  courage  and  firmness  with  which  she 
executed  her  deadly  purpose,  we  shall  be  ready 
to  yield  to  her  the  praise  which  is  her  due."1 
The  extenuating  motives  supplied  by  the  com- 
mentator are  not  to  be  found  in  the  text.  To 
reconcile  us  to  the  assassination  of  Eglon,  a 
distinction  is  drawn  between  God's  providential 
order  and  his  moral  law,  the  providential  order 
ordaining  what  the  moral  law  would  forbid. 
1  The  Speaker's  Commentary,  ad  loc. 


70      THE  CHURCH  AND   THE  OLD   TESTAMENT 

Perhaps  nothing  in  the  Old  Testament  is 
more  instinct  with  fanatical  tribalism  or  more 
revolting  than  the  praise  of  Rahab,  the  harlot 
of  Jericho,  who  secretes  the  spies  of  the  rob- 
ber tribe  which  is  coming  to  destroy  her 
country,  and  who,  though  a  traitress,  has  a 
place  of  honour  as  a  heroine  in  one  of  the 
genealogies  of  Jesus. 

The  writer  heard  the  other  day  a  very 
beautiful  Christian  sermon  on  the  purity  of 
heart  in  virtue  of  which  good  men  see  God. 
But  the  lesson  of  the  day,  read  before  that 
sermon,  was  the  history  of  Jehu.  Jehu,  a 
usurper,  begins  by  murdering  Joram,  the  son 
of  his  master  Ahab,  king  of  Israel,  and 
Ahaziah,  the  king  of  Judah,  neither  of  whom 
had  done  him  any  wrong.  He  then  has  Jeze- 
bel, Ahab's  widow,  killed  by  her  own  servants. 
Next  he  suborns  the  guardians  and  tutors  of 
Ahab's  seventy  sons  in  Samaria  to  murder 
the  children  committed  to  their  care  and 
send  the  seventy  heads  to  him  in  baskets  to 
be  piled  at  the  gate  of  the  city.  Then  he 
butchers  the  brethren  of  Ahaziah,  king  of 
Judah,  with  whom  he  falls  in  on  the  road, 


THE  CHURCH  AND   THE  OLD   TESTAMENT     71 

two  and  forty  in  number,  for  no  specified  or 
apparent  crime.  On  his  arrival  at  Samaria 
there  is  more  butchery.  Finally  he  entraps 
all  the  worshippers  of  Baal,  by  an  invitation 
to  a  solemn  assembly,  and  massacres  them 
to  a  man.  At  the  end  of  this  series  of 
atrocities  the  Lord  is  made  to  say  to  him, 
"  Because  thou  hast  done  well  in  executing 
that  which  is  right  in  mine  eyes  and  hast 
done  unto  the  house  of  Ahab  all  that  was  in 
my  heart,  thy  children  unto  the  fourth  gen- 
eration shall  sit  on  the  throne  of  Israel." 
Jehu  had  undoubtedly  done  what  was  in  the 
heart  of  the  Jehovist  party  and  right  in  its 
eyes.  But  between  the  sensuality  of  the 
Baalite  and  the  sanguinary  zealotry  of  the 
Jehovist  it  might  not  have  been  very  easy 
to  choose. 

David  is  loyal,  chivalrous,  ardent  in  friend- 
ship, and  combines  with  adventurous  valour 
the  tenderness  which  has  led  to  our  accept- 
ing him  as  the  writer  of  some  of  the  Psalms. 
So  far,  he  is  an  object  of  our  admiration, 
due  allowance  for  time  and  circumstance 
being  made.  But  he  is  guilty  of  murder  and 


72      THE  CHURCH  AND   THE  OLD   TESTAMENT 

adultery,  both  in  the  first  degree  ;  he  puts  to 
death  with  hideous  tortures  the  people  of  a 
captured  city  ;  on  his  death-bed  he  bequeaths 
to  his  son  a  murderous  legacy  of  vengeance ; 
he  exemplifies  by  his  treatment  of  his  ten 
concubines,  whom  he  shuts  up  for  life,  the 
most  cruel  evils  of  polygamy  (2  Samuel 
xx.  3).  The  man  after  God's  own  heart  he 
might  be  deemed  by  a  primitive  priesthood 
to  whose  divinity  he  was  always  true  ;  but  it 
is  hardly  possible  that  he  should  be  so  deemed 
by  a  moral  civilization.  Still  less  possible  is 
it  that  we  should  imagine  the  issues  of  spirit- 
ual life  to  be  so  shut  up  that  from  this  man's 
loins  salvation  would  be  bound  to  spring. 

The  books  of  the  Old  Testament,  and  nota- 
bly the  historical  books,  are  for  the  most 
part  by  unknown  authors  and  of  unknown 
dates.  That  the  early  part  of  Genesis  is 
made  up  of  two  narratives,  the  Elohistic,  in 
which  the  name  of  God  is  Elohim,  and  the 
Jehovistic,  in  which  the  name  is  Jehovah,  all 
experts  are  now  agreed,  and  even  the  un- 
learned reader  may  verify  the  fact.  A  com- 
bination of  two  narratives  is  still  traceable  in 


THE  CHURCH  AND   THE  OLD   TESTAMENT     73 

the  history  of  Abraham  and  his  son.  That 
in  the  account  of  the  creation  and  the  flood, 
Assyrian  legend  is  the  basis  on  which  the 
Hebrew  built  a  more  monotheistic  and  sub- 
limer  story,  is  the  opinion  of  writers  who  still 
deem  themselves  orthodox  and  who  apparently 
do  not  shrink  from  the  hypothesis  that  the 
Deity  in  compiling  an  account  of  his  own 
works  was  fain,  as  the  basis  of  his  narrative, 
to  avail  himself  of  an  Assyrian  legend.  Docu- 
mentary analysis  and  the  philosophy  of  his- 
tory combined  have  made  it  highly  probable 
that  writings,  ascribed  by  our  Bible  to  Moses, 
not  only  were  not  his,  but  were  of  a  date  as  late 
as  the  Captivity.  It  is  likely  that  the  schools 
of  the  prophets  played  a  great  part,  as  did  the 
monasteries  of  the  Middle  Ages,  in  composing 
the  chronicles  of  the  nation.  The  pensive- 
ness  of  the  Captivity  seems  to  pervade  the 
Psalms.  These,  as  has  been  already  said, 
are  matters  at  present  of  hypothesis,  and 
though  most  interesting  to  the  learned,  little 
affect  the  practical  question  whether  the  writ- 
ings ascribed  to  Moses  should  continue  to  be 
read  in  churches  as  authentic  and  inspired. 


74      THE  CHURCH  AND   THE  OLD   TESTAMENT 

That  they  are  not  authentic  is  certain.  It  is 
not  less  certain  that  by  whomsoever,  at  what- 
ever time,  and  by  whatever  process  they 
may  have  been  produced,  we  are  without  an 
assignable  reason  for  supposing  them  to  be 
inspired. 

Nor  do  the  Old  Testament  writers  themselves 
put  forward  any  claim  to  inspiration.  Where 
they  cite  elder  authorities,  such  as  the  book 
of  Jasher,  they  in  effect  declare  themselves 
indebted  to  human  records,  and  therefore  un- 
inspired. Preachers,  especially  preachers  of 
reform,  speak  in  the  name  of  Heaven.  Ori- 
ental and  primitive  preachers  speak  as  the 
inspired  organs  of  Heaven.  The  prophets, 
whose  name,  with  its  modern  connotation,  is 
scarcely  more  appropriate  than  it  would  be  if 
applied  to  Savonarola  or  John  Wesley,  are  in 
this  respect  like  others  of  their  class.  One  of 
them  when  bidden  to  prophesy  calls  for  a 
minstrel,  under  the  influence  of  whose  strains 
the  hand  of  the  Lord  comes  upon  him  (2  Kings 
iii.  15  ;  see  also  1  Samuel  x.  5).  All  seers, 
as  their  name  imports,  have  visions.  Primitive 
lawgivers  speak  by  divine  command.  In  no 


THE  CHURCH  AND   THE  OLD   TESTAMENT     76 

other  way,  apparently,  is   inspiration  claimed 
by  the  authors  of  the  Old  Testament. 

Jesus  came  to  substitute  a  religion  of  con- 
science for  that  of  law,  a  religion  of  humanity 
for  that  of  a  race,  worship  in  spirit  and  in 
truth  for  worship  in  the  temple.  His  preach- 
ing was  a  reaction  against  the  Judaism  then 
impersonated  in  the  Pharisee,  afterwards  de- 
veloped in  the  Talmud,  and  now  fully  repre- 
sented in  the  Talmudic  Jew.  But  he  was  not 
a  revolutionist.  Like  Socrates,  he  accepted 
established  institutions,  including  the  national 
ritual,  and  in  that  sense  fulfilled  all  righteous- 
ness. Nor  was  he,  on  any  hypothesis  as  to 
his  nature,  a  critic  or  concerned  with  any 
critical  objections  to  the  sacred  books.  Ad- 
dressing an  audience  which  believed  in  them, 
he  cited  them  and  appealed  to  their  authority 
in  the  usual  way.  He  cites  the  book  of  Jonah, 
and  in  terms  which  seem  to  show  that  he 
regards  it  as  a  real  history ;  so  that  a  literalist, 
like  the  late  Dr.*  Liddon,  took  fire  at  being  told 
that  the  book  was  an  apologue,  considering  this 
an  impeachment  of  the  veracity  of  Jesus.  Yet 
few,  even  of  the  most  orthodox,  would  now  pro- 


76      THE  CHURCH  AND   THE  OLD   TESTAMENT 

fess  to  believe  that  Jonah  sojourned  in  the  belly 
of  a  fish.  St.  Paul  in  like  manner  treats  the 
narrative  of  the  fall  of  Adam  in  Genesis  as 
historical  and  connects  a  doctrine  with  it, 
though  the  mythical  character  of  the  narrative 
is  admitted,  as  we  have  seen,  even  by  a  digni- 
tary of  the  Church. 

The  Evangelists,  simple-minded,  find  in  the 
sacred  books  of  their  nation  prognostications 
of  the  character  and  mission  of  Jesus.  Some- 
times, as  critical  examination  shows,  a  little 
has  been  enough  to  satisfy  their  uncritical 
minds  (see  Matthew  ii.  18 ;  xxi.  5).  But 
surely  it  is  something  like  a  platitude  to  as- 
cribe to  them  such  an  idea  of  Old  Testament 
prophecy  as  is  worked  out  for  us  by  Keith 
and  other  modern  divines.  No  real  and  specific 
prediction  of  the  advent  of  Jesus,  or  of  any 
event  in  his  life,  can  be  produced  from  the 
books  of  the  Old  Testament.  At  most  we 
find  passages  or  phrases  which  are  capable  of 
a  spiritual  application,  and  in  that  metaphorical 
sense  prophetic.  Even  of  the  famous  passage 
in  the  fifty-third  chapter  of  Isaiah,  if  it  is  read 
without  strong  prepossessions,  no  more  than 
this  can  be  said. 


THE  CHURCH  AND   THE  OLD   TESTAMENT     77 

Beyond  contest  and  almost  beyond  com- 
pare is  the  beauty,  spiritual  as  well  as  lyri- 
cal, of  some  of  the  Psalms.  But  there  are 
others  which  it  is  shocking  to  hear  a  Chris- 
tian congregation  reciting,  still  more  shock- 
ing, perhaps,  to  hear  it  chanting  in  a  church. 
To  wish  that  your  enemy's  wife  may  be  a 
widow,  and  that  his  children  may  be  father- 
less and  have  none  to  pity  them,  is  oriental. 
To  wish  that  his  prayer  may  be  turned  to 
sin  and  that  Satan  may  stand  at  his  right 
hand,  to  wish  in  short  for  his  spiritual  ruin, 
is  surely  oriental  and  something  more.  The 
writer  in  Lux  Mundi,  already  cited,  would 
persuade  himself  and  us  that  these  utter- 
ances are  not  those  of  personal  spite,  but 
"the  claim  which  righteous  Israel  makes 
upon  God  that  he  should  vindicate  himself 
and  let  her  eyes  see  how  righteousness  turns 
again  to  judgment."  This  is  the  way  in 
which  we  have  been  led  by  our  traditional 
belief  in  the  inspiration  of  the  Old  Testament 
to  play  fast  and  loose  with  our  understand- 
ings and  with  our  moral  sense.  It  might 
almost  as  well  be  pretended,  when  the  Greek 


78      THE  CHURCH  AND   THE  OLD   TESTAMENT 

poet  Theognis  longs  to  drink  the  blood  of 
his  political  enemies,  that  he  is  not  actuated 
by  hatred,  but  has  some  great  moral  object 
in  his  mind. 

What  is  the  Old  Testament?  It  is  the 
entire  body  of  Hebrew  literature,  theology, 
philosophy,  history,  fiction,  and  poetry,  in- 
cluding the  poetry  of  love  as  well  as  that  of 
religion.  We  have  bound  it  all  up  together 
as  a  single  book,  and  bound  up  that  book 
with  the  New  Testament,  as  though  the 
religion  of  the  two  were  the  same  and  the 
slaughter  of  the  Canaanites  or  the  massacre 
of  the  day  of  Purim  were  a  step  towards 
Christian  brotherhood  and  the  Sermon  on 
the  Mount.  We  have  forcibly  turned  He- 
brew literature  into  a  sort  of  cryptogram 
of  Christianity.  The  love-song  called  the 
Song  of  Solomon  has  been  turned  into  a 
cryptographic  description  of  the  union  of 
Christ  with  his  Church.  A  certain  divine, 
when  his  advice  was  asked  about  the  method 
of  reading  the  Scriptures,  used  to  say  that 
his  method  was  to  begin  at  the  beginning 
and  read  to  the  end;  so  that  he  would  spend 


THE  CHURCH  AND    THE  OLD   TESTAMENT     79 

three  hours  at  least  on  the  Old  Testament 
for  one  that  he  spent  on  the  New,  and  would 
read  the  list  of  the  Dukes  of  Edom  as  often 
as  he  read  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount.  The 
first  step  towards  a  rational  appreciation  of 
the  Old  Testament  is  to  break  up  the  vol- 
ume, separate  the  acts  of  Joshua  or  Jehu 
from  the  teachings  of  Jesus,  and  the  differ- 
ent books  of  the  Old  Testament  from  each 
other.  This  has  been  done  long  since,  men- 
tally at  least,  by  the  critic ;  but  it  has  not 
been  done  by  the  churches.  Nor  have  the 
churches  ceased  to  ascribe  the  Pentateuch 
to  Moses,  the  book  of  Daniel  to  Daniel,  and 
both  parts  of  Isaiah  to  the  same  prophet. 

We  are  told  in  the  book  of  Joshua  (xxiv.  2) 
that  the  ancestors  of  Abraham  served  other 
gods.  How,  or  by  what  influences,  whether 
those  of  individual  reformers  like  the  prophets 
or  of  general  circumstance,  the  nation  was 
raised  from  its  primeval  worship  to  tribal 
monotheism  of  an  eminently  pure  and  exalted 
type,  seems  to  be  a  historical  mystery.  Higher 
than  to  tribal  monotheism  it  did  not  rise  ;  at 
least,  it  advanced  no  further  than  to  the  belief 


80      THE  CHURCH  AND   THE  OLD   TESTAMENT 

that  its'  God  was  superior  in  power  as  well  as 
in  character  to  all  other  gods,  and  thus  Lord 
of  the  whole  earth.  Its  God  was  still  the 
God  of  Israel,  and  the  Jews  were  still  his 
chosen  people.  Nor  did  it  wholly  get  rid  of 
localism.  Jerusalem  was  still  the  abode  of 
God  when  Jesus,  according  to  the  fourth 
Gospel,  announced  to  the  woman  of  Samaria 
the  abolition  of  local  religion.  Judaism, 
therefore,  never  reached  the  religious  ele- 
vation of  some  chosen  spirits  among  the 
heathen  world,  such  as  Seneca,  Marcus 
Aurelius,  and  Epictetus ;  although  the  Jew- 
ish belief  was  more  intense  than  that  of  the 
philosophers  and  extended  not  only  to  a 
select  circle  but  to  a  portion  at  least  of  the 
people. 

Nor  could  the  Jew,  hampered  as  he  was 
by  lingering  tribalism,  form  a  conception  of 
the  universality  and  majesty  of  divine  gov- 
ernment in  the  form  of  moral  law  such  as 
we  find  in  Plato  or  in  Cicero.  There  is 
nothing  in  the  Hebrew  writings  like  a  pas- 
sage in  Cicero's  Republic,  preserved  by  Lac- 
tantius :  "  There  is  a  true  law,  right  reason, 


THE  C1IURCH  AND   THE  OLD   TESTAMENT     81 

in  unison  with  nature,  all-embracing, '  consist- 
ent, and  eternal,  which,  by  its  commands, 
calls  to  duty,  by  its  prohibitions  deters  from 
crime,  which,  however,  never  addresses  to 
the  good  its  commands  or  its  prohibitions 
in  vain,  nor  by  command  or  prohibition 
moves  the  wicked.  This  law  cannot  be 
amended,  nor  can  any  clause  of  it  be  re- 
pealed, nor  can  it  be  abrogated  as  a  whole. 
By  no  vote  either  of  the  Senate  or  of  the 
people  can  we  be  released  from  it.  It  re- 
quires none  to  explain  or  to  interpret  it. 
Nor  will  there  be  one  law  at  Rome  and 
another  at  Athens ;  one  now  and  another 
hereafter.  For  all  nations  and  for  all  time 
there  will  be  one  law,  immutable  and  eter- 
nal; there  will  be  a  common  master  and 
ruler  of  all,  —  God,  the  f ramer,  exponent,  and 
enactor  of  this  law,  whom  he  who  fails  to 
obey  will  be  recreant  to  himself,  and,  re- 
nouncing human  nature,  will,  by  that  very 
fact,  incur  the  severest  punishment,  even 
though  he  should  escape  other  penalties  real 
or  supposed."1  Equally  broad  is  the  lan- 

^Divin.  Instit.,VI.t  8. 
o 


82      THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  OLD   TESTAMENT 

guage  of  the  De  Legibus:  "Since,  then,  noth- 
ing is  superior  to  reason,  whether  in  God  or 
man,  it  is  by  partnership  in  reason,  above 
all,  that  man  is  connected  with  God.  Part- 
nership in  reason  is  partnership  in  right 
reason ;  and  as  law  is  right  reason,  law 
again  is  a  bond  between  God  and  man. 
Community  of  law  is  community  of  right. 
Those  to  whom  these  things  are  common 
are  citizens  of  the  same  commonwealth.  If 
men  obey  the  same  power  and  rule,  much 
more  do  they  obey  this  celestial  code,  the 
divine  mind  and  the  supreme  power  of  God. 
So  that  we  must  regard  this  universe  as 
one  and  a  single  commonwealth  of  gods  and 
men.  And  whereas  in  states,  on  a  prin- 
ciple of  which  we  will  speak  in  the  proper 
place,  the  position  of  the  citizen  is  marked 
by  his  family  ties,  in  the  universal  nature  of 
things  we  have  something  more  august  and 
glorious,  the  bond  of  kinship  between  gods 
and  men."1 

Of  a  belief  in  the  immortality  of  the  soul  no 
evidence  can  be  found  in  the  Old  Testament, 
1  De  Leg.,  I,  7. 


THE  CHURCH  AND   THE  OLD   TESTAMENT     83 

though  readers  of  the  Bible  who  continue  to 
use  the  unrevised  version  may  remain  under 
the  impression  that  the  doctrine  is  found  in 
Job.  Sheol  is  merely,  like  the  Hades  of  the 
Odyssey,  a  shadowy  abode  of  the  dead.  Had 
the  doctrine  of  a  resurrection  been  proclaimed 
in  the  Mosaic  books,  it  could  hardly  have  been 
denied  by  the  Sadducees  ;  its  acceptance  by 
the  Pharisees  was  a  speculation  of  their  school. 
In  Ezekiel  xviii.  life  is  held  out  as  the  re- 
ward of  those  who  do  well ;  death  is  the  pen- 
alty of  those  who  do  evil.  But  the  "life,"  for 
all  that  appears,  is  temporal,  though  the  Chris- 
tian, by  reading  into  it  immortality,  may  apply 
the  chapter  to  his  own  use.  Enoch  and  Elijah 
are  represented  as  translated  to  heaven,  not  as 
living  after  death,  nor  is  it  said  that  the  appari- 
tion of  Samuel  called  up  by  the  witch  of  Endor 
was  the  spirit  of  Samuel  himself  ;  it  appears 
rather  to  have  been  like  the  apparitions  sum- 
moned by  the  witches  in  Macbeth.  The  re- 
wards and  punishments  of  the  Old  Testament 
are  temporal  and  material  ;  its  rewards  are 
wealth  and  offspring,  its  punishments  are  beg- 
gary and  childlessness.  The  only  immortality 


84      THE  CHURCH  AND   THE  OLD   TESTAMENT 

of  which  it  speaks  is  the  perpetuation  of  a 
man's  family  in  his  tribe.  The  vindication 
and  requital  of  Job's  virtue  are  added  wealth 
and  multiplied  offspring.  Nor  do  we  find  in 
the  Old  Testament  that  moral  immortality,  if 
the  expression  may  be  used,  which  is  found  in 
Greek  and  Roman  philosophers,  who,  without 
speaking  definitely  of  a  life  after  death,  identify 
the  virtuous  man  with  the  undying  power  of 
virtue  and  intimate  that  it  will  be  well  with 
him  in  the  sum  of  things. 

Not  assuredly  that  the  Hebrew  literature 
lacks  qualities,  irrespective  of  its  dogmatic  posi- 
tion, such  as  may  well  account  for  the  hold 
which  it  has  retained,  in  spite  of  its  primeval 
cosmogony,  theology,  or  morality,  on  the  alle- 
giance of  civilized  minds.  The  sublimity  of  its 
cosmogony  impressed,  as  we  know,  Longinus. 
Voltaire  himself  could  hardly  have  failed  to 
acknowledge  the  magnificence  of  some  parts  of 
the  prophetic  writings,  though  in  other  parts 
he  might  find  marks  for  his  satire.  All  must 
be  touched  by  the  beauty  of  the  story  of  Joseph 
and  of  the  book  of  Ruth.  Admirable,  we  repeat, 
are  both  the  religious  and  the  lyrical  excel- 


THE  CHURCH  AND   THE  OLD   TESTAMENT     85 

lence  of  some  of  the  Psalms.  The  histories  are 
marred  by  tribalism,  primeval  inhumanity,  and 
fanaticism  ;  but  they  derive  dignity  as  well  as 
unity  from  the  continuous  purpose  which  runs 
through  them,  and  which  in  the  main  is  moral ; 
since  Jehovah  was  a  God  of  righteousness  and 
purity,  in  contrast  with  the  gods  of  other  tribes. 
His  worship,  though  ritual,  sacrificial,  and  un- 
like the  worship  "in  spirit  and  in  truth,"  the 
advent  of  which  was  proclaimed  to  the  woman 
of  Samaria,  was  yet  spiritual  compared  with 
that  of  deities  whose  votaries  gashed  them- 
selves with  knives  or  celebrated  lascivious 
orgies  beneath  the  sacred  tree. 

Hebrew  law  is  primitive,  and  the  idea  of 
reviving  it,  conceived  by  some  of  the  Puritans, 
was  absurd.  But  it  is  an  improvement  in 
primitive  law.  It  makes  human  life  sacred, 
treating  murder  as  a  crime  to  be  punished  with 
death,  not  as  a  mere  injury  to  be  compounded 
by  a  fine.  It  recognizes  the  avenger  of  blood, 
the  rude  minister  of  justice  before  the  insti- 
tution of  police  ;  but  it  confines  his  office  to 
the  case  of  wilful  murder,  and  forbids  heredi- 
tary blood-feuds.  It  recognizes  asylum,  a  nee- 


86      THE  CHURCH  AND   THE  OLD   TESTAMENT 

essary  check  on  wild  primeval  passion,  but 
confines  it  to  accidental  homicide,  ordaining 
that  if  a  man  slay  his  neighbour  with  guile, 
he  shall  be  taken,  even  from  the  altar,  and 
put  to  death.  It  recognizes  the  father's  power 
of  life  and  death  over  his  child,  patria  potestat 
as  the  Roman  called  it,  but  unlike  the  hideous 
Roman  law,  it  requires  public  procedure  and 
a  definite  charge,  while  it  secures  mercy  by 
requiring  the  concurrence  of  the  mother.  It 
recognizes  polygamy,  but  strives  to  temper  the 
jealousies  and  injustice  of  the  harem.  It  is 
comparatively  hospitable  and  liberal  in  its 
treatment  of  the  stranger.  Its  Sabbath  was 
most  beneficent,  especially  to  the  slave,  and 
strict  formality  was  essential  to  observance 
among  primitive  people.  Ordeal  is  confined 
to  the  particular  case  of  a  wife  suspected  of 
infidelity,  and  divination  is  forbidden  save 
by  the  Urim  and  Thummim.  The  law  miti- 
gates the  customs  of  war,  requiring  that  a  city 
shall  be  summoned  before  it  is  besieged,  and 
forbidding  the  cutting  down  of  the  fruit  trees 
in  a  hostile  country,  which  was  regularly  prac- 
tised by  the  Greeks  ;  while  the  female  captive, 


THE  CHURCH  AND   THE  OLD   TESTAMENT     87 

instead  of  being  dragged  at  once  to  the  bed  of 
the  captor,  is  allowed  a  month  of  mourning. 
Nor  is  war  exalted  or  encouraged,  as  it  was 
among  the  Assyrians  and  the  Persians.  Ser- 
vice is  to  be  voluntary ;  captains  are  to  be 
chosen  only  when  the  army  takes  the  field,  so 
that  there  would  be  no  military  class ;  horses 
and  chariots  are  not  to  be  multiplied.  Jeho- 
vah, though  a  God  of  battles,  is  not  char- 
acteristically so.  Not  victory  in  war,  but 
peace,  is  the  normal  blessing.  Kings  it  was 
expected  the  Israelites  would  have,  like  the 
nations  around  them.  But  unlike  the  kings 
of  the  nations  around  them,  their  king  was 
to  be  the  choice  of  the  nation ;  he  was  to  be 
under  the  law,  which  he  was  to  study  that 
his  heart  might  not  be  lifted  up  among  his 
brethren ;  and  his  luxury,  his  harem,  his  accu- 
mulation of  treasure,  and  his  military  estab- 
lishment were  to  be  kept  within  bounds. 
Finally,  while  there  was  to  be  a  priestly  order, 
that  order  was  not  to  be  a  caste.  The  Levites 
were  to  be  ordained  by  the  laying  on  of  the 
hands  of  the  whole  assembly  of  Israel.  Nor, 
while  the  ritual  was  consigned  to  the  priest" 


88      THE  CHURCH  AND   THE  OLD   TESTAMENT 

hood,  was  religious  teaching  confined  to  them  ; 
its  organs  were  the  prophet  and  the  psalmist. 
Worship  was  sacrificial,  and  all  sacrifice  is 
irrational,  but  there  was  no  human  sacrifice, 
and  the  scape-goat  was  a  goat,  not,  as  among 
the  polished  Athenians,  a  man.  The  Ameri- 
can slave-owner  could  appeal  to  the  Old  Testa- 
ment as  a  warrant  for  his  institution.  Slavery 
there  was  everywhere  in  primitive  times,  but 
the  Hebrew  slave-law  is  more  merciful  than 
that  either  of  Greece  or  Rome,  notwithstand- 
ing the  ordinance,  shocking  to  our  sense,  which 
held  the  master  blameless  for  killing  his  slave 
if  death  was  not  immediate,  on  the  ground  that 
the  slave  "was  his  money."1  The  belief  in 
witchcraft  as  a  crime  to  be  punished  by  death 
is  also  accepted  as  true,  and,  though  not  promi- 
nent, gave  birth  in  misguided  Christendom  to 
an  almost  incredible  series  of  atrocities.  How 

1  An  essay  written  by  the  author  on  the  question  "  Does 
the  Bible  Sanction  American  Slavery?"  has  probably  been 
long  since  forgotten.  In  its  line  of  argument  against  slavery 
as  an  anachronistic  and  immoral  revival  of  a  primitive  and 
once  moral  institution  it  was  consistent  with  the  present 
paper.  But  the  essay  was  written  in  the  penumbra  of  ortho- 
doxy and  would  now  require  very  great  modification. 


THE  CHURCH  AND   THE  OLD   TESTAMENT     89 

far  these  ordinances  or  any  of  them  actually 
took  effect  we  cannot  say.  Probably  they 
were  to  a  great  extent  speculative  and  ideal. 
The  ordinance  against  cutting  down  the  fruit 
trees  in  an  enemy's  country  certainly  was  not 
observed,  for  the  fruit  trees  of  the  Moabites 
are  cut  down,  Elisha  giving  the  word  (2  Kings 
iii.  19).  The  agricultural  polity  of  family 
freeholds,  reverting  to  the  family  in  the  year 
of  jubilee,  may  safely  be  said  to  have  never 
come  into  practical  existence,  but  to  have 
been  the  ideal  Republic  of  some  very  Hebrew 
Plato.  Nor  was  the  court  or  the  harem  of 
Solomon  limited  by  any  jealous  regulations. 

From  the  social  point  of  view,  perhaps 
the  most  notable  passages  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment are  those  rebuking  the  selfishness  of 
wealth  and  the  oppression  of  the  poor  in  the 
prophetic  writings  and  the  Psalms,  which  have 
supplied  weapons  for  the  champions  of  social 
justice.  There  is  scarcely  anything  like  these 
in  Greek  or  Roman  literature.  Juvenal  com- 
plains of  the  contempt  and  insult  to  which 
poverty  exposes  a  man,  but  he  does  not  de- 
nounce social  oppression.  In  this  respect  the 


90      THE  CHURCH  AND   THE  OLD   TESTAMENT 

Mahometan  and  the  Buddhist  are  perhaps 
superior  to  the  Greek  or  Roman.  But  we 
shall  hardly  find  anywhere  a  moral  force  equal 
in  intensity  to  that  of  the  Hebrew  prophets, 
narrowly  local  and  national  though  their 
preaching  is. 

In  forming  an  estimate  of  Hebrew  litera- 
ture we  may  have  still  to  be  upon  our  guard 
against  a  lingering  belief  in  the  inspired  char- 
acter of  the  books  which  is  apt  to  betray  itself 
in  a  somewhat  unbounded  admiration.  Much 
in  the  prophets  surely  is  rhapsody  to  which  in- 
tense self-excitement  might  give  birth.  Of  the 
history  we  have  only  the  prophet's  version,  and 
if  the  other  side  had  spoken,  complaints  of 
gloomy  and  oppressive  fanaticism  might  have 
been  heard.  It  was  hardly  well  that  modern 
religion  and  life  should  take  their  colour  from 
a  sombre  struggle  between  Jehovah  and  Baal. 
There  is  in  Hebrew  literature  comparatively 
little  of  tenderness  or  geniality,  of  humour 
nothing,  unless  it  be  the  grotesque  adventures 
of  Samson  among  the  Philistines.  To  the 
growth  of  science  blind  belief  in  the  Old 
Testament,  which  represents  each  event  of 


THE  CHURCH  AND   THE  OLD   TESTAMENT     91 

nature  as  the  direct  act  of  Jehovah,  exclud- 
ing secondary  causes,  has  been  morally  op- 
posed. Neither  of  science  nor  of  art  had  the 
Jew  any  share  ;  and  both  defects  make  them- 
selves felt. 

Religion  in  the  primitive  state  of  man  is 
identified  with  nationality.  For  a  member  of 
the  tribe  or  of  the  nation,  which  inherited  the 
religion  of  the  tribe,  to  worship  any  but  the 
tribal  or  national  god  or  gods  is  treason  pun- 
ishable by  death.  "He  that  sacrificeth  unto 
any  god  save  unto  the  Lord  only  he  shall  be 
utterly  destroyed."  To  the  importation  of 
this  feature  of  an  obsolete  tribalism  into  Chris- 
tianity, Christendom  in  part  at  least  owes  the 
fatal  identification  of  the  Church  with  the 
State,  the  extermination  of  the  Albigenses,  the 
religious  wars,  the  Inquisition,  the  burning  of 
Servetus.  At  the  end  of  the  seventeenth 
century  a  boy  was  put  to  death  by  the  Cal- 
vinistic  fanatics  of  Scotland  for  having  blas- 
phemed the  Lord  by  disparaging  the  dogma  of 
the  Trinity.  Nor  have  we  yet  got  rid  of  the 
shade  cast  over  human  life  by  superstitious 
use  of  a  literature  dark  with  struggles  of 


92      THE  CHURCH  AND   THE  OLD   TESTAMENT 

religion  or  race,  stern  with  denunciation,  de- 
void of  humour  or  playfulness,  and  seldom 
in  touch  with  common  humanity. 

We  have  been  taught  by  philosophic  apolo- 
gists to  believe  in  Jewish  history  and  legisla- 
tion as  the  education  of  a  chosen  people 
directed  by  the  Almighty  and  leading  them 
gradually  from  a  low  to  a  high  morality, 
from  fetishism  or  primitive  superstition  to 
monotheism,  and  from  tribalism  to  humanity. 
This,  as  it  recognizes  a  low  beginning  and  a 
gradual  improvement,  is  at  all  events  a  rational 
view  compared  with  the  common  bibliolatry. 
But  Jewish  progress  after  all  is  only  a  segment, 
however  momentous  a  segment,  of  the  progress 
of  civilization.  There  is  nothing  in  it  which 
denotes  the  exclusive  action  of  deity.  This, 
since  a  broader  view  has  been  taken  of  history, 
is  almost  universally  acknowledged.  Then  the 
education  thus  designated  as  divine,  —  in  what 
did  it  end  ?  In  the  Jews  of  Ezra,  with  their  in- 
tensified tribalism  and  self-estrangement  from 
humanity,  not  only  renouncing  intermarriage 
with  other  races,  but  ruthlessly  putting  away 
the  wives,  mothers,  and  children  with  whom 


THE  CHURCH  AND   THE  OLD   TESTAMENT     93 

they  had  been  living  ;  in  Pharisaism ;  in  cere- 
monialism, the  most  irrational  and  oppressive  ; 
in  Jewish  angelology  and  demonology,  the 
craziest  of  superstitions ;  in  the  Talmud  with 
its  extravagant  legalism  and  its  unspeakable 
nonsense  ;  in  the  murder  of  the  great  Teacher 
of  humanity  and  the  rejection  of  his  Gospel ; 
in  the  perpetuation  of  tribalism  of  the  most 
hateful  kind  by  a  vast  cosmopolitan  race  of 
usurers  wandering  over  the  world  without  a 
country,  treating,  in  their  pride  of  race,  their 
fellowmen  as  gentiles  and  unclean,  preying  on 
all  the  nations,  and  inevitably  hated  by  them 
aU. 

If  Jerusalem  may  be  credited  with  Christian- 
ity as  her  final  development,  papal  Rome  may 
be  credited  with  the  religion  of  the  Refor- 
mation. There  is  a  continuity,  there  is  an  en- 
during element  in  both  cases.  The  Sanhedrim 
understood  Judaism,  and  when  it  yelled  "  Cru- 
cify him "  it  knew  what  the  relation  was  be- 
tween its  own  religion  and  the  teaching  of 
Christ. 

That  which  is  not  a  supernatural  revelation 
may  still,  so  far  as  it  is  good,  be  a  manifestation 


94      THE  CHURCH  AND   THE  OLD   TESTAMENT 

of  the  divine.  As  a  manifestation  of  the 
divine  the  Hebrew  books,  teaching  righteous- 
ness and  purity,  may  keep  their  place  in  our 
love  and  admiration  for  ever  ;  while  of  their 
tribalism,  their  intolerance,  their  religious 
cruelty,  we  for  ever  take  our  leave.  The  time 
has  surely  come  when  as  a  supernatural  reve- 
lation they  should  be  frankly  though  reverently 
laid  aside,  and  no  more  allowed  to  cloud  the 
vision  of  free  inquiry  or  to  cast  the  shadow 
of  primeval  religion  and  law  over  our  modern 
life. 

It  surely  is  useless  and  paltering  with  the 
truth  to  set  up,  like  the  writer  in  Lux  Mundi, 
and  other  rationalistic  apologists,  the  figment 
of  a  semi-inspiration.  An  inspiration  which 
errs,  which  contradicts  itself,  which  dictates 
manifest  incredibilities,  such  as  the  stopping 
of  the  sun,  Balaam's  speaking  ass,  Elisha's 
avenging  bears,  or  the  transformation  of  Nebu- 
chadnezzar, is  no  inspiration  at  all.  It  requires 
the  supplementary  action  of  human  criticism 
to  winnow  the  divine  from  the  human,  the 
truth  from  the  falsehood ;  and  the  result  of  the 
process  varies  with  the  personal  tendencies  of 


THE  CHURCH  AND   THE  OLD   TESTAMENT     95 

the  critics.  The  use  of  the  phrase  "  inspiration  " 
when  the  belief  has  really  been  abandoned  is 
worse  than  weak  ;  it  is  Jesuitical,  and  will  end 
as  all  Jesuitry  must  end.  Those  who  try  to 
break  the  fall  of  orthodoxy  will  only  make  the 
fall  heavier  at  last.  When  we  are  told  that 
there  are  in  the  Old  Testament  Scriptures  both 
a  human  and  a  divine  element,  we  must  ask 
by  what  test  the  divine  is  to  be  distinguished 
from  the  human  and  proved  to  be  divine. 
Nobody  would  ever  have  thought  of  "partial 
inspiration"  except  as  an  expedient  to  cover 
retreat.  We  do  but  tamper  with  our  own 
understandings  and  consciences  by  such  at- 
tempts at  once  to  hold  on  and  let  go,  to  retain 
the  shadow  of  the  belief  when  the  substance  has 
passed  away.  Far  better  it  is,  whatever  the 
effort  may  cost,  honestly  to  admit  that  the 
sacred  books  of  the  Hebrews,  granting  their 
superiority  to  the  sacred  books  of  other  nations, 
are,  like  the  sacred  books  of  other  nations,  the 
works  of  man  and  not  of  God.  Compared  with 
the  semi-inspirationist,  the  believers  in  verbal 
inspiration,  of  whom  some  still  remain,  des- 
perate as  are  the  difficulties  with  which  they 


96      THE  CHURCH  AND   THE  OLD   TESTAMENT 

have  to  contend,  stand  upon  firm  ground. 
Verbal  inspiration  is  at  all  events  a  consecrated 
tradition  as  well  as  a  consistent  view.  Semi- 
inspiration  is  a  subterfuge  and  nothing  more. 

That  the  semi-inspiration  theory  is  entirely 
new  and  has  sprung  up  to  meet  the  inroads  of 
destructive  criticism,  those  who  have  embraced 
it  do  not  deny.  Yet  Providence  would  surely 
have  shown  a  curious  indifference  to  its  own 
ends  if  it  had  so  constructed  revelation  that  a 
false  view  of  it,  entailing  the  most  disastrous 
consequences,  should  have  inevitably  prevailed 
and  been  disseminated  through  all  the  churches 
till  now. 

These  are  troublous  times.  The  trouble  is 
everywhere :  in  politics,  in  the  social  system, 
in  religion.  But  the  storm-centre  seems  to 
be  in  the  region  of  religion.  The  fundamental 
beliefs  on  which  our  social  system  has  partly 
rested  are  giving  way.  To  replace  them 
before  the  edifice  falls,  and  at  the  same  time 
to  give  us  such  knowledge  as  may  be  attainable 
of  man's  estate  and  destiny,  thought  must  be 
entirely  free. 


IS  THERE   ANOTHER  LIFE? 


THE  appearance  of  a  portly  and  learned 
volume  by  the  Rev.  Dr.  Salmond  on  The 
Christian  Doctrine  of  Immortality  shows  the 
anxious  interest  which  has  been  awakened  in 
these  questions.  His  treatment  of  the  subject 
also  recognizes  the  necessity  which  is  felt  of 
perfectly  free  though  reverent  inquiry,  as  our 
sole  way  of  salvation  amidst  the  perplexities, 
theological,  social,  and  moral,  in  which  we 
are  now  involved.  For  himself,  he  unreserv- 
edly accepts  the  Christian  revelation.  Chris- 
tianity, he  is  so  happy  as  to  believe,  "has 
translated  the  hope  of  immortality  from  a 
guess,  a  dream,  a  longing,  a  probability,  into 
a  certainty,  and  has  done  this  by  interpreting 
us  to  ourselves  and  confirming  the  voice  of 
prophecy  within  us."  But  he  subjects  the 
sacred  records  of  Christianity  to  critical  exam- 
99 


100  IS  THERE  ANOTHER  LIFE? 

ination.  He  does  not  talk  effete  orthodoxy 
to  an  age  of  reason.  Nor  does  he  rest  upon 
the  evidence  of  Revelation  alone.  He  en- 
deavours to  combine  with  it  that  of  Manifesta- 
tion as  presented  by  reason  and  history. 

The  change  made  by  Darwin's  great  dis- 
covery—  as,  with  all  rights  of  modification 
reserved,  it  may  surely  be  called,1  —  in  our 
notions  regarding  the  origin  of  our  species 
could  not  fail  to  stimulate  curiosity  as  to  its 
destiny.  We  held,  it  is  true,  before  Darwin 
that  man  had  been  formed  out  of  the  dust ; 
in  that  respect  our  ideas  have  undergone  no 
change.  It  is  true  also  that  whatever  our 
origin  may  have  been,  and  through  whatever 
process  we  may  have  gone,  we  are  what  we 
are,  none  the  less  for  Darwin's  discovery; 
while  the  fact  that  we  have  risen  from  the 

1 1  once  ventured  to  ask  an  eminent  Darwinian  whether 
he  thought  that  within  any  limit  of  time  assignable  for  the 
duration  of  bird  life  upon  this  planet,  the  Darwinian  pro- 
cess of  natural  selection  could  have  produced  a  bird  which 
should  build  a  nest  in  anticipation  of  laying  an  egg.  He 
said  that  account  must  be  taken  of  the  faculty  of  imitation. 
To  which  the  reply  was,  that  to  produce  that  faculty  another 
Darwinian  process,  extending  through  countless  aeons, 
would  be  required. 


IS  THERE  ANOTHER  LIFE?  101 

dust  or  from  the  condition  of  the  worm,  in- 
stead of  leading  us  to  despair,  ought  rather 
to  inspire  us  with  hope.  Still,  before  Darwin 
we  rested  in  the  belief  that  man  had  been 
called  into  existence  by  a  separate  creation,  in 
virtue  of  which  he  was  a  being  apart  from  all 
other  animals;  and  this  belief  has  by  Darwin 
been  dispelled.  A  being  apart  from  the  other 
animals  man  remains  in  virtue  of  his  reason, 
of  which  other  animals  have,  at  most,  only  the 
rudiments,  and  yet  more  perhaps  in  virtue  of 
his  aspirations  and  his  capacity  for  improve- 
ment, of  which  even  the  most  intelligent  of 
the  other  animals,  so  far  as  we  can  see,  have 
no  share.  He  alone  pursues  moral  good;  he 
alone  is  religious ;  he  alone  is  speculative, 
looking  before  and  after ;  he  alone  feels  the 
influence  of  beauty  and  expresses  his  sense  of 
it  in  poetry  and  art ;  what  is  lust  in  brutes  in 
him  alone  is  love ;  he  alone  thinks  or  dreams 
that  there  is  in  him  anything  that  ought  not 
to  die.  Yet  Darwin's  discovery  has  effaced 
the  impassable  line  which  we  took  to  have 
been  drawn  by  a  separate  creation  between 
man  and,  the  beasts  which  perish. 


102  IS  THERE  ANOTHER  LIFEt 

Science,  moreover,  Darwinian  and  general, 
has  put  an  end  to  the  traditional  belief  in 
the  soul  as  a  being  separate  from  the  body, 
breathed  into  the  body  by  a  distinct  act  of 
the  Creator,  pent  up  in  it  as  in  a  prison-house, 
beating  spiritually  against  the  bars  of  the  flesh 
and  looking  to  be  set  free  by  death..  Soul 
and  body,  we  now  know,  form  an  indivisible 
whole,  the  nature  of  man  being  one,  enfolded 
at  first  in  the  same  embryo,  advancing  in  all 
its  parts  and  aspects  through  the  same  stages 
to  maturity,  and  succumbing  at  last  to  the 
same  decay.  Not  that  this  makes  our  nature 
more  material  in  the  gross  sense  of  that  term. 
Spirituality  is  an  attribute  of  moral  elevation 
and  aspiration,  not  of  the  composition  of  the 
organism.  Tyndall  called  himself  a  "materi- 
alist," yet  no  man  was  ever  less  so  in  the 
gross  sense.  If  we  wish  to  see  clearly  in  these 
matters  it  might  be  almost  better  to  suspend 
for  a  time  our  use  of  the  word  "soul,"  with 
its  traditional  connotation  of  antagonism  to 
the  body,  and  to  speak  only  of  the  higher  life 
or  of  spiritual  aim  and  effort. 

We   have,  moreover,  in   approaching    these 


IS  THERE  ANOTHER  LIFE?  103 

questions  to  clear  our  minds  entirely  of  geo- 
centricism,  theological  and  philosophical  as 
well  as  physical,  of  our  notions  of  this  earth 
as  the  centre  of  the  universe  and  the  grand 
scene  of  providential  action,  and  at  the  same 
time  of  the  ideas  of  our  religious  infancy 
about  the  Mosaic  beginning  and  the  Apoca- 
lyptic end  of  things.  We  have  wholly  to 
banish  the  creations  of  Milton's  fancy,  so 
strongly  impressed  upon  our  imaginations,  as 
well  as  the  Ptolemaic  cosmography,  and  think 
no  more  of  a  heaven  above  and  an  earth  be- 
low, with  angels  ascending  and  descending 
between  them,  or  of  a  court  of  heaven  look- 
ing down  upon  the  earth.  We  must  float  out 
in  thought  into  a  universe  without  a  centre, 
without  limit,  without  beginning  or  end,  of 
which  all  that  we  see  on  a  starlight  night  is 
but  a  point,  in  which  we  ourselves  are  but 
living  and  conscious  atoms.  To  fathom  the 
mystery  of  the  universe, — that  is,  the  mystery 
of  existence,  —  we  cannot  hope.  Of  eternity 
and  infinity  we  can  form  no  notion ;  we  can 
think  of  them  only  as  time  and  space  extended 
without  limit,  a  conception  which  involves  a 


104  IS  THERE  ANOTHER  LIFE? 

metaphysical  absurdity,  since  of  space  and 
time  we  must  always  think  as  divisible  into 
parts,  while  of  infinity  or  eternity  there  can 
be  no  division.  The  thought  of  eternal  ex- 
istence, even  of  a  life  of  eternal  happiness, 
if  we  dwell  upon  it,  turns  the  brain  giddy; 
it  is  a  sort  of  mental  torture  to  attempt  to 
realize  the  idea. 

The  doctrine  of  a  future  life  with  rewards 
for  the  good  and  punishment  for  the  wicked, 
as  we  all  know,  pervades  the  New  Testament. 
That  this  present  world  is  evil,  and  Christians 
must  look  forward  to  a  better,  is  the  senti- 
ment of  the  Founder  of  Christianity  and  of 
all  the  Christian  churches.  It  could  not  fail 
to  be  fostered  by  the  state  of  the  world, 
especially  of  a  province  like  Galilee,  under  the 
Roman  Empire.  The  Christian  martyrdoms 
are  a  signal  testimony  to  the  same  belief. 
Yet  the  doctrine  can  hardly  be  said  to  be 
so  distinctly  stated  in  the  New  Testament 
as  its  overwhelming  importance  might  have 
led  us  to  expect.  It  is  in  fact  rather  as- 
sumed than  stated.  The  passages  concern- 
ing it  are  rather  homiletic  than  dogmatic ; 


IS  THERE  ANOTHER  LIFE  105 

they  are  enforcements  of  the  infinite  blessed- 
ness of  piety  and  goodness,  of  the  infinite 
curse  attending  wickedness,  rather  than  enun- 
ciations of  an  article  for  a  creed.  Nor  is 
anything  explicitly  said  as  to  the  manner  in 
which  the  mortal  is  to  put  on  immortality, 
or  as  to  the  state  and  occupations  of  the 
blessed  in  the  next  world.  White  robes, 
harps,  palm  branches,  a  city  of  gold  and 
jewels,  are  not  spiritual;  they  must  be  taken 
as  material  imagery  ;  taken  literally,  they 
provoke  the  derision  of  the  sceptic. 

Difficulties  crowd  upon  us  and  severely  tax 
the  exegetical  resources  of  Dr.  Salmond.  A 
sudden  and  absolute  change  of  nature  is  con- 
trary to  all  our  experience,  which  would  lead 
us  to  believe  that  gradual  progress  is  the 
law.  The  disproportion  of  eternal  rewards 
and  punishments  to  the  merits  or  sins  of 
man's  short  life  is  profoundly  repugnant  to 
our  moral  sense.  When  we  take  in  the 
cases  of  children,  of  savages,  of  the  hapless 
offspring  of  the  slums,  of  the  heathen  who 
have  never  heard  the  Word,  the  difficulty  is 
immensely  increased. 


106  IS  THERE  ANOTHER  LIFE? 

In  all  the  churches  there  is  now  a  revolt 
against  the  belief  in  eternal  fire,  which,  never- 
theless, if  the  Gospel  is  to  be  taken  literally, 
it  would  seem  difficult  to  avoid.  Such  a 
belief  in  fact  can  hardly  be  thought  ever  to 
have  gained  a  practical  hold  on  the  mind  ; 
if  it  had,  it  would  almost  have  dissolved  hu- 
manity with  terror.  Imagination  could  not 
have  played  with  the  idea  as  it  does  in  the 
poem  of  Dante,  where  God,  with  his  everlast- 
ing torture-house,  is  a  thousand  times  more 
cruel  than  Eccelino  or  the  tyrants  of  Milan. 

Nor  is  there  in  reality  any  such  line  of  de- 
marcation between  the  good  and  the  wicked 
as  that  drawn  in  the  homiletic  language  of 
the  Gospel  between  the  wheat  and  the  tares, 
between  the  sheep  and  the  goats,  between 
the  people  of  the  wide  and  those  of  the  nar- 
row gate.  Between  the  extreme  points  of 
goodness  and  wickedness  there  are  gradations 
of  character  in  number  infinite  and  fluctuat- 
ing from  hour  to  hour.  The  Roman  Catholic 
Church  tries  to  meet  this  difficulty  by  the 
invention  of  Purgatory,  which,  it  is  needless 
to  say,  is  a  creation  of  her  own.  In  this  case 


IS  THERE  ANOTHER  LIFE?  107 

also  the  difficulty  is  enhanced  when  we  take 
in  children  and  those  on  whom  circumstances 
have  borne  so  hardly  as  almost  to  preclude 
volition. 

Is  the  doctrine  of  resurrection  to  be  extended 
to  every  being  that  has  borne  human  form, — 
the  Caliban  just  emerging  from  the  ape,  the 
cave-dweller,  the  Carib,  the  idiot,  as  well  as 
the  infant  in  whom  reason  and  morality  had 
barely  dawned  ?  Where  can  the  line  be  drawn  ? 

Nor  are  the  passages  in  the  Gospel  concern- 
ing the  future  state,  if  pressed  literally,  alto- 
gether consistent  with  each  other,  at  least 
with  regard  to  the  mode  of  the  transition. 
The  idea  generally  presented  is  that  of  a  final 
judgment  in  which  the  good  are  to  be  sepa- 
rated from  the  wicked,  the  good  entering  into 
eternal  joy,  the  wicked  into  eternal  fire,  and 
of  a  period  of  sleep  or  unconsciousness  which 
is  to  last  till  the  Judgment  Day.  But  this 
is  not  consistent  with  the  parable  of  Dives 
and  Lazarus,  with  the  preaohing  of  Christ  to 
the  souls  in  prison,  or  with  the  words  of 
Christ  on  the  cross  to  the  penitent  thief. 
These  variations  become  more  important  when 


108  IS  THERE  ANOTHER  LIFE? 

we  consider  the  unspeakably  vital  character 
of  the  doctrine. 

Resurrection  of  the  body  is  an  article  of 
the  Creed.  It  presents  insuperable  difficul- 
ties ;  not  only  are  the  particles  of  the  body 
dispersed,  but  they  must  often  be  incorpo- 
rated into  other  bodies.  Besides,  is  a  babe 
to  rise  again  a  babe,  and  is  an  old  man  to 
rise  with  the  body  of  old  age  ?  Devices  for 
meeting  such  difficulties  may  be  found ;  but 
they  are  devices  and  not  solutions.  St. 
Paul's  answer  to  doubters  involves  the  false 
analogy  of  the  seed,  which  germinates  when 
he  fancies  that  it  dies. 

It  is  on  the  Christian  revelation  that  our 
hope  has  hitherto  rested.  Butler,  when  he 
applies  reason  to  the  question  of  a  future  life, 
has  revelation  all  the  time  in  reserve.  He 
professes  not  to  offer  independent  proof  of 
the  doctrine,  but  merely  to  disarm  Reason  of 
the  objections  which  she  might  urge  against 
Revelation.  Of  independent  proof,  with  def- 
erence be  it  said,  he  offers,  not  so  much  as, 
with  our  present  scientific  lights  at  all  events, 
will  amount  even  to  a  serious  intimation. 


JS  THERE  ANOTHER  LIFE?  109 

Assuming,  after  the  fashion  of  his  day,  that 
the  soul  is  a  being  apart  from  the  body,  he 
suggests  that  it  may  be  a  simple  monad,  inde- 
cerptible  and  therefore  indestructible,  or  at 
least  not  presumably  liable  to  dissolution  when 
the  body  is  dissolved.  But  we  know  that 
his  presumption  is  unfounded,  and  that  what 
he  calls  the  soul  is  but  the  higher  and  finer 
activity  of  our  general  frame.  He  says  that 
the  faculties  and  emotions  sometimes  remain 
unaffected  by  mortal  disease  even  at  the  point 
of  death.  But  they  do  not  remain  unaffected 
by  a  disease  of  the  brain.  His  strongest  point 
perhaps  is  the  unbroken  continuance  of  con- 
scious identity  notwithstanding  the  change 
of  our  bodily  frame  by  the  flux  of  its  compo- 
nent particles,  and  in  spite  of  sleep  and  fits 
of  insensibility.  But  the  flux  of  particles  or 
the  suspension  of  consciousness  by  sleep  or  a 
fainting  fit  is  a  different  thing  from  total 
dissolution,  such  as  takes  place  when  the  body 
moulders  in  the  grave.  Besides,  the  phe- 
nomenon is  common  to  us  with  brutes,  and 
the  objection  that  this  or  any  other  of  But- 
ler's arguments  would  apply  as  well  to  brutes 


110  IS  THERE  ANOTHER  LIFE? 

as  to  man  is  not  to  be  evaded  by  calling 
it  invidious.  The  great  thinker  would  per- 
haps have  seen  this  more  clearly  had  he  lived 
in  the  Darwinian  age  and  been  disenchanted 
of  his  belief  in  the  special  breathing  of  a  soul 
into  man.  He  is  so  far  from  our  present 
point  of  view  as  to  think  that  dreams  are  prod- 
ucts of  the  mind  acting  apart  from  the  bodily 
sense.  Do  not  dogs  also  dream? 

There  are  those  who,  like  Mr.  Francis 
Newman  when  he  wrote  The  Soul,  discard  all 
arguments  on  this  subject  addressed  to  the 
intellect  apart  from  the  intuitions  of  the  spirit- 
ual man.  Intuition  is  incommunicable,  and 
it  is  to  the  intellect  alone  that  arguments  can 
be  addressed.  Besides,  if  intuition  or  faith 
were  traced  to  its  source,  it  might  be  found 
to  have  sprung  from  an  intellectual  convic- 
tion implanted  in  early  years.  The  existence 
of  such  a  faculty  as  religious  intuition  inde- 
pendent of  any  action  of  the  intellect  would 
surely  be  difficult  to  demonstrate. 

The  great  thinkers  of  antiquity,  while  they 
lacked  our  modern  science,  had  the  advantage, 
when  they  had  once  thrown  off  their  state 


IS  THERE  ANOTHER  LIFE?  Ill 

polytheism,  of  studying  the  problem  of  exis- 
tence with  minds  free  from  ecclesiastical  or 
theological  prepossession.  Of  the  two  greatest 
of  them  Plato  believed  intensely  in  a  future 
life,  for  which  this  present  life  is  but  a  train- 
ing, and  in  a  future  state  of  rewards  and 
punishments.  His  arguments,  put  into  the 
mouth  of  Socrates,  who  is  about  to  die,  come 
to  us  in  the  most  persuasive  guise.  But  they 
are  entangled  with  the  fanciful  tenets  of  pre- 
existence,  of  knowledge  as  a  reminiscence  from 
a  previous  state,  and  of  the  real  existence  of  ab- 
stract ideas.  They  are  based  on  the  erroneous 
conception  of  the  soul  as  an  entity  distinct  from 
the  body  and  imprisoned  in  it,  so  that,  in  the 
case  at  least  of  one  who  has  kept  his  soul 
pure  and  healthy  by  philosophy  and  asceticism, 
death  would  be  emancipation.  The  soul, 
Plato  thinks,  cannot  be  affected  by  diseases 
of  the  body,  but  only  by  its  own  diseases, 
ignorance  and  vice.  An  evidence  of  more 
weight  practically  than  any  of  the  metaphysi- 
cal arguments  adduced  by  the  disciple  of 
Socrates  is  the  death  of  Socrates  itself,  which, 
like  the  Christian  martyrdoms,  implies  a  strong 


112  IS  THERE  ANOTHER  LIFE? 

and  rooted  faith  in  the  future  reward  of 
loyalty  to  truth  and  virtue.  The  same  faith 
is  expressed  by  Plato  in  the  Republic.  To 
him  amid  the  license  of  Athenian  democracy 
in  its  hour  of  decay,  as  to  the  Christian  amid 
the  demoralization  of  the  Roman  Empire,  the 
world  seemed  evil ;  and  he  found  support  for 
righteousness  in  the  conviction  that  though 
the  righteous  man  may  suffer  obloquy,  perse- 
cution, and  even  a  painful  and  shameful  death 
in  this  life,  it  would  be  well  for  him  in  the 
final  result.  If  there  is  a  soul  of  the  uni- 
verse and  if  it  holds  communion  in  any  way 
with  the  soul  of  man,  such  a  belief  would 
seem  likely  to  be  no  mere  hallucination. 

In  Aristotle's  Ethics  there  is  no  trace  of  the 
doctrine,  either  in  its  specific  form  or  in  the 
form  of  faith  in  the  ultimate  triumph  of  vir- 
tue which  it  assumes  in  Plato.  The  fact  is 
that  virtue,  in  our  sense  of  the  word  and  as 
denoting  obedience  to  a  moral  law,  is  hardly 
a  term  of  Aristotle's  system.  His  virtue  is 
not  so  much  obedience  to  a  moral  law  as  the 
functional  activity  of  fully  developed  and 
perfectly  balanced  humanity,  such  as  is  pre- 


IS  THERE  ANOTHER  LIFE?  113 

sented  with  a  rather  statuesque  dignity  in 
his  moral  character  of  the  high-minded  man 
(^yaXo'i/ru^o?).  All  that  he  wants  is  a  life 
sufficiently  long  for  full  development  (£109 
reXeto?).  Of  compensation  or  retribution  he 
seems  to  have  no  idea. 

In  the  great  Stoics,  Epictetus  and  Marcus 
Aurelius,  there  is  no  expression  of  belief  in  a 
personal  life  beyond  the  present.  What  they 
seem  to  expect  is  absorption  in  the  universe, 
which,  if  personality  is  merged,  would  be  the 
extinction  of  our  personal  selves.  On  the 
other  hand,  they  show  the  profoundest  faith  in 
the  divinity  of  the  moral  law,  in  the  nothing- 
ness of  present  pleasures  or  pains,  and  in  the 
infinite  reward  of  virtue.  Their  asceticism 
—  that  of  Marcus  Aurelius  on  a  throne  — 
was  a  practical  demonstration  of  their  faith. 
In  Seneca  may  be  found  a  vague  intimation 
of  belief  that  death  is  a  transition  to  a 
higher  life ;  but  Seneca  is  a  rhetorician  rather 
than  a  philosopher. 

A  belief  in  the  immortality  of  the  soul  has 
been  a  part  of  most  of  the  religions,  yet  not 
of  all.  It  is  absent  from  the  sacred  books 


114  IS  THERE  ANOTHER  LIFE? 

of  the  Hebrews,  strenuous  as  have  been  the 
efforts  to  import  it  into  them,  and  bold  as  is 
the  statement  of  the  Anglican  Articles  that 
both  in  the  Old  and  the  New  Testament 
everlasting  life  is  offered  to  mankind  through 
Christ.  An  exception  such  as  that  of  the 
Hebrews,  an  eminently  religious  nation,  is 
enough  to  bar  any  argument  from  universal 
consent,  even  if  universal  consent,  where  it 
can  be  explained  by  natural  desire,  were 
sufficient  to  prove  a  belief  innate.  The  other 
world  has  often  formed  the  lucrative  domain 
of  priests,  who  have  pretended  by  mystic  rites 
to  provide  the  dying  with  a  passport  to  ce- 
lestial bliss.  Egypt  seems  to  have  been  pre- 
eminent in  the  definiteness  of  her  creed  and 
the  minuteness  of  her  mortuary  ritual,  while 
she  was  also  strangely  preeminent  in  the  effort 
to  protract  the  existence  of  the  bodily  tene- 
ment, showing  thereby  apparently  an  absence 
of  belief  in  the  separate  existence  of  the  soul. 
The  Persian  faith  in  a  future  life  appears  also 
to  have  been  strong,  though  mixed  with  de- 
grading absurdities  which  make  it  philosophi- 
cally worthless.  Buddhism  is  a  philosophy 


15  THERE  ANOTHER  LIFE?  115 

rather  than  a  religion,  while  upon  any  hypothe- 
sis as  to  the  meaning  of  Nirvana,  the  hope  of 
the  Buddhist  is  not  personal  immortality  but 
escape  from  personal  existence.  Be  Nirvana 
what  it  may,  it  is  a  fancy,  generated  in  part 
by  local  influences,  and  offers  nothing  in  the 
way  of  verification. 

"  The  evidences  of  a  future  life,  sir,  are 
sufficient,"  was  Boswell's  remark  to  Johnson. 
"  I  could  wish  for  more,  sir,"  was  Johnson's 
reply.  It  was  no  doubt  his  sense  of  the  in- 
sufficiency of  the  evidences,  considering  the 
vital  character  of  the  doctrine,  that  disposed 
Johnson  to  belief  in  ghosts,  and  made  him 
anxious  to  investigate  all  stories  of  the  kind, 
even  when  they  were  so  absurd  as  that  of  the 
ghost  of  Cock  Lane.  It  cannot  be  necessary  to 
discuss  such  fictions.  The  only  case,  so  far 
as  we  are  aware,  in  which  there  is  anything 
like  first-hand  evidence  is  that  of  the  warning 
apparition  to  Lord  Lyttelton,  which  may  be 
explained  as  the  masked  suicide  of  a  voluptuary 
sated  with  life.  Nor  can  Spiritualistic  appari- 
tions call  for  notice  here.  They  have  been 
enough  exposed.  Nothing  is  proved  by  them 


116  18  THERE  ANOTHER  LIFE? 

but  the  fond  credulity  of  bereavement  pining 
for  communion  with  the  lost.  Spiritualism,  it 
should  not  be  forgotten,  had  its  farcical  origin 
in  table-turning.  Apart  from  the  miraculous 
resurrection  of  Christ,  and  Christ's  miraculous 
raisings  from  the  dead,  no  one  has  been  seen  or 
heard  from  after  death.  That  evidence  which 
alone  could  be  absolutely  conclusive  has  never 
been  afforded.  This  is  the  stubborn  fact  with 
which  Butler  and  those  who  adopt  his  line  of 
argument  have  to  contend. 

Positivism  hopes  that  it  has  indemnified,  or 
more  than  indemnified,  us  for  the  loss  of  per- 
sonal immortality  by  tendering  an  imper- 
sonal immortality  in  the  consequences  of  our 
lives  and  actions  prolonged  through  the  gen- 
erations which  come  after  us  to  the  end  of 
time.  But  this  immortality  is  not  only  imper- 
sonal, it  is  unconscious,  and,  therefore,  so  far 
as  our  sensations  are  concerned,  not  distin- 
guishable from  annihilation.  It  is  not  even 
specially  human;  we  share  it  with  every 
motor,  animate  or  inanimate  ;  with  the  horse 
which  draws  a  wagon,  with  the  water  which 
turns  a  mill,  with  the  food  which  passes  into 


IS  THERE  ANOTHER  LIFE?  117 

the  muscles  of  the  consumer,  with  the  falling 
stone. 

Besides,  all  theories  which  pretend  to  con- 
sole man  for  his  mortality  by  making  him  a 
partaker  in  the  immortality  of  his  race,  seem, 
as  was  said  before,  to  encounter  the  objection 
that  the  race  itself  is  not  immortal.  How  long 
the  planet  which  is  the  abode  of  man  will  last 
or  remain  fit  for  man's  habitation,  the  oracles 
of  science  may  not  be  agreed,  but  they  appear 
to  be  agreed  in  holding  that  the  end  must 
come.  If  they  are  right,  philosophy  does  but 
mock  us  when  she  bids  us  find  our  real  spirit- 
ual life  in  efforts  to  perfect  humanity,  and  our 
paradise  in  anticipation  of  the  state  of  bliss 
into  which  humanity,  when  perfected,  will  be 
brought.  At  a  certain,  however  remote,  date 
planetary  wreck  will  be  the  end.  Nor  has  the 
promise  of  perfection  by  evolution,  such  as 
another  school  of  thinkers  holds  out,  any  ad- 
vantage in  this  respect  over  the  promise  of 
perfection  by  effort.  Evolution,  like  effort, 
comes  at  last  to  naught.  That  death  is  the 
renewing  of  the  species,  and  apparently  indis- 
pensable to  progress,  might  be  a  satisfactory 


118  IS  THERE  ANOTHER  LIFE? 

reflection  if  the  species  were  everything  and 
the  individual  were  nothing.  But  the  indi- 
vidual is  something  in  his  own  eyes.  Against 
any  scientific  theory  that  human  organisms  are 
simply  vehicles  for  the  transmission  of  life 
the  consciousness  of  each  organism  protests 
and  rebels.  It  is  conceivable  that  by  the 
progress  of  humanity,  before  the  end  of  our 
world,  some  glorious  consummation  may  be 
reached.  But  it  is  hardly  conceivable  that 
in  that  consummation  we  or  the  cave-dwellers 
can  have  a  share. 

Still  less  can  any  substitute  for  our  hope  of 
a  personal  immortality  be  found  in  demonstra- 
tions of  the  indefeasible  vitality  of  protoplasm. 
The  hope  which  we  resign  is  personal.  Proto- 
plastic vitality  is  not.  Life  more  or  less  active 
may,  as  these  comforters  tell  us,  pervade  all 
things;  and  in  that  sense  we  may  continue  to 
live  after  our  dissolution  and  absorption  into 
the  general  frame  of  nature.  But  what  is  the 
value  of  a  life  of  which  we  shall  not  be  indi- 
vidually conscious  ?  There  may  be  life  in  the 
fermentation  of  a  dunghill.  But  who  can 
imagine  himself  blest  in  the  prospect  of  shar- 
ing it  ? 


IS  THERE  ANOTHER  LIFE?  119 

Of  death  and  of  the  perpetual  renewal  of  the 
race  the  necessity  is  obvious  so  far  as  the 
present  estate  of  man  is  concerned.  Upon 
the  succession  of  generations  man's  conjugal 
and  parental  character,  among  other  things, 
depends.  The  existence  of  an  undying  man 
would  be  that  of  one  of  Swift's  "  Struldbrugs  " 
infinitely  prolonged. 

There  are  those  who  think  to  console  them- 
selves for  the  shortness  of  life  and  its  final  ex- 
tinction at  death,  by  saying  that  its  very  short- 
ness makes  it  all  the  more  precious  while  it 
lasts,  and  that  a  pensive,  or,  to  use  their  phrase, 
an  idyllic  tenderness,  is  imparted  to  it  by  the 
prospect  of  its  extinction.  Such  an  argument 
seems  open  to  an  easy  reduction  to  absurdity, 
since  it  implies  that  the  more  brief  and  pre- 
carious the  possession  the  more  valuable  is  the 
thing  possessed.  A  great  deal  of  poetry,  no 
doubt,  has  its  source  in  our  mortality.  But 
such  poetry  is  not  an  expression  of  enjoyment 
or  gladness ;  it  is  a  melodious  sigh  in  which 
sadness  finds  relief. 

It  may  be  admitted  that  our  non-existence 
jn  the  future  is  not  less  conceivable  than. 


120  IS  THERE  ANOTHER  LIFE? 

our  non-existence  in  the  past,  which  we 
take  as  certain,  notwithstanding  the  Socratic 
fancy  of  reminiscence.  But  we  now  exist, 
and  the  question  whether  we  continue  to 
exist  or  return  to  nothing  is  one  of  proba- 
bility and  evidence,  not  of  possible  con- 
ception. That  the  universe  might  do  without 
us  we  may  modestly  admit ;  whether  it  intends 
to  do  without  us  is  what  we  are  feebly 
endeavouring  to  divine. 

John  Stuart  Mill,  in  a  passage  of  his  essay 
on  Immortality,  highly  lauded  by  Fitzjames 
Stephen,  admits  the  possibility  of  conceiving 
that  thought  may  continue  to  exist  without  a 
material  brain,  the  relation  of  the  two  being  no 
metaphysical  necessity,  but  simply  a  constant 
coexistence  within  the  limits  of  observation. 
Even  if  we  suppose  thought  to  embrace  life, 
feeling,  and  affection,  the  mere  admission  that 
its  disembodied  existence  is  conceivable  would 
be  but  cold  comfort.  Mill  himself  seems  to 
fall  back  on  the  enjoyment  of  the  present  life 
exalted  by  the  religion  of  humanity  and  end- 
ing in  what  he  calls  "eternal  rest."  "If," 
he  says  in  his  essay  on  The  Utility  of  Religion, 


IS  THERE  ANOTHER  LIFE?  121 

"  the  Religion  of  Humanity  were  as  sedulously 
cultivated  as  the  supernatural  religions  are, 
...  all  who  had  received  the  customary 
amount  of  moral  cultivation  would  up  to  the 
hour  of  death  live  ideally  in  the  life  of  those 
who  are  to  follow  them."  What  is  the  Re- 
ligion of  Humanity?  How  can  there  be  a 
religion  without  a  God?  How  can  we  wor- 
ship a  generalization  which  cannot  hear  prayer 
or  hymn,  which  is  not  even  complete,  since  the 
history  of  man  is  unfinished,  and  of  which,  to 
enhance  the  anomaly,  the  worshipper  himself 
is  a  part  ?  Is  the  religion  of  Humanity  any- 
thing more  than  a  fervid  philanthropy  which 
must  probably  be  confined  to  a  few  choice 
spirits  and,  so  far  as  it  involves  self-sacri- 
fice, is  not  likely  to  be  increased  by  the  con- 
viction that  the  philanthropist,  in  giving  up 
present  good,  gives  up  all?  What  again  is 
ideal  life  but  unreal  life?  What  is  unreal 
life  but  death?  To  Mill  it  appears  probable 
that  after  a  length  of  time  different  in  dif- 
ferent persons  they  would  have  had  enough 
of  existence  and  would  gladly  lie  down  to 
take  their  eternal  rest.  Death  is  not  rest : 


122  IS  THERE  ANOTHER  LIFE? 

it  is  destruction.  When  we  lay  ourselves 
down  to  rest  it  is  with  the  prospect  of  wak- 
ing again  refreshed  and  invigorated  to  new 
life.  A  Greek  poet  spoke  to  the  heart  when 
he  tearfully  contrasted  the  lot  of  man  with 
that  of  the  flowers  of  the  field,  which  renew 
their  growth  at  the  return  of  spring,  while 
man  with  all  his  bravery  and  wisdom,  once 
laid  in  his  dark  and  narrow  bed,  sleeps  a  sleep 
which  knows  no  waking. 

Yet  it  is  not  the  extinction  of  bravery  and 
wisdom  that  most  moves  our  pity  for  ourselves. 
This  the  next  generation  may  repair.  The 
torch  of  science  is  handed  on,  and  the  discovery 
half  made  by  one  man  of  science  is  completed, 
when  he  is  gone,  by  a  successor.  It  is  the 
perpetual  slaughter  of  affection  that  touches  us 
most,  and  that,  we  should  think,  would  most 
touch  the  Power  in  whose  hands  we  are,  if  in 
its  nature  there  is  any  affinity  to  mortal  love. 
Affection  at  all  events,  without  the  survival  of 
the  personalities,  must  die  for  ever. 

The  mere  existence  of  a  desire  in  man  to 
prolong  his  being,  even  if  it  were  universal, 
can  afford  little  assurance  that  the  desire  will 


IS  THERE  ANOTHER  LIFE?  123 

be  fulfilled.  Of  desires  that  will  never  be 
fulfilled  man's  whole  estate  is  lamentably  full. 
If  to  each  of  us  his  own  little  being  is  inex- 
pressibly dear,  so  is  its  own  little  being  to  the 
insect,  which  nevertheless  is  crushed  without 
remorse  and  without  hope  of  a  future  existence. 
It  is  sad  that  man  should  perish,  and 
perish  just  when  he  has  reached  his  prime. 
This  seems  like  cruel  wastefulness  in  nature. 
But  is  not  nature  full  of  waste  ?  Butler  rather 
philosophically  finds  an  analogy  to  the  waste 
of  souls  in  the  waste  of  seeds.  He  might  have 
found  one  in  the  destruction  of  geological 
races,  in  the  redundancy  of  animal  life,  which 
involves  elimination  by  wholesale  slaughter,  in 
the  multitude  of  children  brought  into  the 
world  only  to  die.  The  deaths  of  children,  of 
which  a  large  number  appear  inevitable,  seem 
to  present  an  insurmountable  stumbling-block 
to  any  optimism  which  holds  that  nature  can 
never  be  guilty  of  waste,  even  in  regard  to  the 
highest  of  her  works.  Waste  there  evidently 
is  in  nature  both  animate  and  inanimate,  and 
to  an  enormous  extent  if  our  intelligence  tells 
us  true.  The  earth  is  full  of  waste  places  as 


124  IS  THERE  ANOTHER  LIFE? 

well  as  of  blind  agencies  of  destruction,  such 
as  earthquakes,  volcanic  fires,  and  floods,  while 
her  satellite  appears  to  be  nothing  but  waste. 

Can  we  rest  on  the  presumption  that  for  all 
suffering,  at  least  for  all  unmerited  suffering, 
here,  supreme  justice  must  have  provided  com- 
pensation hereafter?  Is  there  not  an  infinity 
of  suffering  among  animals  ?  Are  not  many  of 
them  by  the  very  constitution  of  nature  doomed 
as  the  prey  of  other  animals  to  suffer  agonies 
of  fear  and  at  last  a  painful  death  ?  Are  not 
others  fated  to  be  tortured  by  parasites  ?  Yet 
where  will  be  their  compensation  ?  Where  will 
be  the  compensation  of  the  hapless  dog  which 
writhes  beneath  the  knife  of  the  vivisector,  and 
which  not  only  is  innocent  but  is  an  involun- 
tary benefactor  of  humanity  ? 

That  a  survey  of  nature  drives  us  to  one  of 
two  conclusions,  either  to  the  conclusion  that 
Benevolence  is  not  omnipotent  or  to  the  con- 
clusion that  Omnipotence  is  not,  in  our  accepta- 
tion of  the  term,  purely  benevolent,  has  been 
proved  with  a  superfluity  of  logic.  What  may 
be  behind  the  veil  we  cannot  tell.  But  in  that 
which  is  manifested  to  us  there  seems  to  be 


IS  THERE  ANOTHER  LIFE?  126 

nothing  that  can  warrant  us  in  looking  for 
immortality  as  the  certain  gift  of  unlimited 
benevolence  invested  with  unlimited  power. 
What  lies  beyond  that  which  is  manifested 
to  us  is  the  region  not  of  demonstration  but 
of  hope. 

Yet  man  shrinks  from  annihilation.  If  he 
were  certified  of  it,  in  spite  of  all  that  science 
or  criticism  has  done  to  prepare  him  for  disen- 
chantment, and  notwithstanding  the  soothing 
talk  of  philosophers  about  "eternal  rest,"  his 
being  would  receive  a  great  shock.  A  fear- 
ful light  would  be  thrown  on  the  misery  and 
degradation  of  which  the  world  is  full,  has 
always  been  full,  and  is  likely  long  to  remain 
full.  A  fearful  light  would  be  thrown  on  all 
the  horrors  of  history.  The  sufferers  of  the 
past  at  all  events  derived  no  comfort  amidst 
famine,  plague,  massacre,  and  torture,  from 
these  theories  of  an  "ideal  life,"  of  a  "Reli- 
gion of  Humanity,"  and  of  a  "posthumous 
and  subjective  existence  in  the  progress  of 
the  species."  A  selfish  tyrant  like  Louis  XIV. 
would  on  this  supposition,  at  least  while  his 
fortune  lasted,  have  been  of  all  men  the 


126  IS  THERE  ANOTHER  LIFE? 

happiest,  while  the  victims  of  his  selfish  ambi- 
tion or  rapine,  slaughtered  in  his  profligate 
wars,  perishing  of  hunger  through  his  extrava- 
gance, or  worked  to  death  as  slaves  in  his 
galleys,  would  have  been  of  all  men  the  most 
miserable. 

Is  there  any  voice  in  our  nature  which  dis- 
tinctly tells  us  that  death  is  not  the  end  ?  If 
there  is,  there  seems  to  be  no  reason  why  we 
should  not  listen  to  it,  even  though  its  message 
may  be  incapable  of  verification  such  as  in 
regard  to  a  material  hypothesis  is  required  by 
physical  science.  That  the  intelligence  of  our 
five  senses,  of  which  science  is  the  systematized 
record,  is  exhaustive,  we  have,  as  was  before 
said,  no  apparent  ground  for  assuming;  the 
probability  seems  to  be  the  other  way ;  it 
seems  likely  that  our  senses,  mere  nerves  even 
if  completely  evolved,  are  imperfect  monitors, 
and  that  we  may  be  living  in  a  universe  of 
which  we  really  know  as  little  as  the  mole, 
which  no  doubt  seems  to  itself  to  perceive 
everything  that  is  perceptible,  knows  of  the 
world  of  sight.  Now,  there  does  seem  to  be 
a  voice  in  every  man  which,  if  he  will  listen  to 


IS  THERE  ANOTHER  LIFE?  127 

it,  tells  him  that  his  account  is  not  closed  at 
death.  The  good  man,  however  unfortunate 
he  may  have  been,  and  even  though  he  may 
not  have  found  integrity  profitable,  feels  at  the 
end  of  life  a  satisfaction  in  his  past  and  an 
assurance  that  in  the  sum  of  things  he  will  find 
that  he  has  chosen  aright.  The  most  obdu- 
rately wicked  man,  however  his  wickedness  may 
have  prospered,  will  probably  wish  when  he 
comes  to  die  that  he  had  lived  the  life  of  the 
righteous.  It  may  be  possible  to  explain  the 
sanctions  or  warnings  of  conscience  generally 
as  the  influence  of  human  opinion  reflected  in 
the  individual  mind,  transmitted  perhaps  by 
inheritance  and  accumulated  in  transmission. 
But  such  an  explanation  will  hardly  cover  the 
case  of  death-bed  self -approbation  or  remorse. 
There  seems  to  be  no  reason  why  we  should 
not  trust  the  normal  indications  of  our  moral 
nature  as  well  as  the  normal  indications  of  our 
bodily  sense ;  and  against  the  belief  that  the 
greatest  benefactors  and  the  greatest  enemies 
of  mankind  rot  at  last  undistinguished  in  the 
same  grave  our  moral  nature  vehemently 
rebels. 


128  IS  THERE  ANOTHER  LIFE? 

This  at  all  events  is  certain  :  if  death  is 
to  end  all  alike  for  the  righteous  and  for  the 
unrighteous,  for  those  who  have  been  blessings 
and  for  those  who  have  been  curses  to  their 
kind,  the  Power  which  rules  the  universe  can- 
not be  just  in  any  sense  of  the  word  which 
we  can  understand. 

Is  there  anything  which  appears  to  transcend 
the  conditions  of  man's  present  existence,  to 
be  likely  to  survive  and  be  carried  over  to  a 
larger  sphere  of  being  ?  This  seems  to  be  the 
practical  question  if  the  subject  is  to  be  re- 
garded from  the  strictly  rational  point  of  view. 
Character  is  no  doubt  formed  by  action  on  a 
basis  of  natural  tendency,  under  the  moulding 
environment  of  circumstance  ;  nor  can  it  be 
affirmed  that  there  is  anything  in  moral  action 
not  dictated  by  the  present  requirements  of 
our  state  as  domestic  and  social  beings,  having 
relations  with  others,  as  well  as  being  under 
the  necessity  of  caring  for  ourselves.  Yet, 
while  formed  and  manifested  by  acting  in 
conformity  with  the  rules  of  our  present  life, 
character  seems  when  formed  to  have  a  value 
and  a  beauty  of  its  own,  apart  from  its  use- 


IS  THERE  ANOTHER  LIFE?  129 

fulness  in  current  action ;  so  that  we  can 
contemplate  it,  mark  its  improvement  or  dete- 
rioration in  ourselves,  and  make  its  improve- 
ment the  object  of  distinct  and  conscious 
effort.  What  we  call  spiritual  life  seems  in 
fact  to  be  the  cultivation  of  character  carried 
on  under  religious  influence  by  a  sort  of  inner 
self.  It  is  conceivable  that  good  and  beauti- 
ful character  may  be  prized  by  the  Soul  of 
the  Universe,  if  the  universe  has  a  soul,  as 
capable  of  union  with  itself,  and  that  it  may 
thus  transcend  the  limits  of  our  being  here. 
If  this  is  but  a  hint,  on  a  question  at  once  so 
dark  and  of  such  overwhelming  importance, 
we  may  gladly  welcome  the  faintest  gleam 
of  light. 

At  the  same  time,  so  far  as  we  can  discern, 
character  can  be  formed  only  by  effort,  which 
implies  something  against  which  to  strive; 
so  that  without  evil,  or  what  appears  to  us 
evil,  character  could  not  be  formed.  The  ex- 
istence of  evil  in  fact,  so  far  as  we  can  see,  is 
the  necessary  condition  of  active  life.  For 
aught  we  know,  effort,  or  something  which  we 
can  only  describe  as  effort,  not  fiat  or  mere 


130  IS  THERE  ANOTHER  LIFE? 

evolution,  may  be  the  real  law  of  the  universe. 
It  is  true  that  the  immortality  to  which 
any  suggestion  of  this  kind  points  would  be 
of  the  conditional  kind,  since  good  character 
only  could  have  a  life-giving  affinity  to  the 
power  of  good. 

To  all  the  questionings  about  the  origin  of 
evil,  which  the  writer  of  Genesis  answered 
by  the  story  of  the  Forbidden  Fruit,  our 
answer  must  be  that  what  we  call  evil  is  a 
part  of  the  constitution  of  the  universe. 

Supposing  all  proofs  of  personal  immor- 
tality failed  us,  we  should  have  to  fall  back 
upon  the  Stoic  idea  of  reabsorption  in  the 
universe  and  union  with  its  workings  and 
destinies,  whatever  they  may  be.  If  con- 
sciousness and  affection  are  lost,  pain,  suf- 
fering, and  unfulfilled  desire  at  all  events 
will  be  no  more. 

All  arguments  of  this  kind  of  course  have 
relation  to  the  natural  aspect  of  things  apart 
from  revelation.  He  who,  with  Dr.  Sal- 
mond,  believes  that  he  has  a  divine  revela- 
tion in  the  Gospel,  and  a  pledge  of  immor- 
tality in  union  with  Christ,  can  stand  in  no 


IS  THERE  ANOTHER  LIFE?  131 

need  of  further  assurance  otherwise  than  in 
the  way  of  corroboration.  He  discusses  the 
natural  evidences,  like  Butler,  with  revelation 
in  reserve. 

There  are  those  who  think  they  display 
their  good  sense  in  bidding  us  give  up  these 
speculations,  which,  they  tell  us,  are  beyond 
the  range  of  our  understandings,  and  culti- 
vate our  pleasure  and  happiness  in  the  present 
world.  One  element  of  our  pleasure  and 
happiness  is  the  gratification  of  curiosity  on 
the  highest  subjects.  Our  curiosity  has  been 
or  is  being  gratified  as  to  the  origin  of  our 
species,  and  surely  the  destiny  of  our  species 
is  a  question  not  less  interesting  even  to  sci- 
ence, while  it  is  inevitably  set  on  foot  by  the 
other.  However,  pleasure  and  happiness  are 
different  things.  Pleasure  may  be  felt  by  the 
condemned  convict  in  eating  his  last  meal. 
But  happiness  seems  to  imply  the  sense  of 
security  and  permanence.  It  can  hardly  be 
predicated  of  a  being  whose  life  is  never  safe 
and  at  most  endures  but  for  an  hour. 

The  estate  of  man  upon  this  earth  of 
ours  may  in  course  of  time  be  vastly  improved. 


132  IS  THERE  ANOTHER  LIFE? 

So  much  seems  to  be  promised  by  the  recent 
achievements  of  science,  whose  advance  is  in 
geometrical  progression,  each  discovery  giv- 
ing birth  to  several  more.  Increase  of  health 
and  extension  of  life  by  sanitary,  dietetic,  and 
gymnastic  improvement ;  increase  of  wealth 
by  invention,  and  of  leisure  by  the  substitu- 
tion of  machinery  for  labour ;  more  equal  dis- 
tribution of  wealth,  with  its  comforts  and 
refinements;  diffusion  of  knowledge;  political 
improvement;  elevation  of  the  domestic  affec- 
tions and  social  sentiments ;  unification  of 
mankind,  and  elimination  of  war  through 
ascendency  of  reason  over  passion,  —  all  these 
things  may  be  carried  to  an  indefinite  extent, 
and  may  produce  what  in  comparison  with  the 
present  estate  of  man  would  be  a  terrestrial 
paradise.  Selection  and  the  merciless  struggle 
for  existence  may  be  in  some  measure  super- 
seded by  selection  of  a  more  scientific  and 
merciful  kind.  Death  may  be  deprived  at 
all  events  of  its  pangs.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  horizon  does  not  appear  to  be  clear 
of  cloud.  The  pressure  of  population  is 
a  danger  which  the  anti-Malthusian  can  no 


IS  THERE  ANOTHER  LIFE?  133 

longer  set  at  naught,  and  to  check  which  it 
is  certain  that  Providence  will  not  interpose. 
The  tendency  of  the  factory  with  its  increas- 
ing division  of  labour  has  not  hitherto  been 
to  make  industrial  life  less  monotonous  or 
more  cheerful.  Frost,  heat,  storm,  drought, 
and  earthquake,  human  progress  can  hardly 
abate.  Art  and  poetry  do  not  seem  likely  to 
advance  with  the  ascendency  of  severe  science. 
There  is  some  truth  in  the  saying  of  the  poet 
that  a  glory  has  passed  away  from  the  earth. 
However,  let  our  fancy  suppose  the  most 
chimerical  of  Utopias  realized  in  a  com- 
monwealth of  man.  Mortal  life  prolonged  to 
any  conceivable  extent  is  but  a  span.  Still 
over  every  festal  board  in  the  community  of 
terrestrial  bliss  will  be  cast  the  shadow  of 
approaching  death;  and  the  sweeter  life  be- 
comes, the  more  bitter  death  will  be.  The 
more  bitter  it  will  be  at  least  to  the  ordinary 
man,  and  the  number  of  philosophers  like 
John  Stuart  Mill  is  small. 


THE   MIRACULOUS   ELEMENT  IN 
CHRISTIANITY 


THE   MIRACULOUS  ELEMENT  IN 
CHRISTIANITY 

THE  effect  produced  by  the  teaching  of 
Jesus  and  his  disciples  is,  beyond  question, 
the  most  momentous  fact  in  history.  If  cir- 
cumstances, such  as  the  fusion  of  races  under 
the  Roman  Empire  and  the  distress  attend- 
ant on  the  decline  of  the  Empire  concurred, 
Christianity  was  the  motive  power.  The  con- 
version of  Saul  marks  the  greatness  of  the 
moral  change.  It  is  the  proclamation  of  a 
new  ideal  of  human  brotherhood  and  purity 
of  life.  Here,  if  at  any  point  in  history,  we 
may  believe  that  the  Spirit  of  the  World,  if 
the  world  has  a  spirit,  was  at  work.  If  evil 
to  a  terrible  extent  as  well  as  good  has  appar- 
ently flowed  from  the  Gospel;  if  Christianity 
has  given  birth  to  priestcraft,  intolerance, 
persecution,  and  religious  war,  as  well  as  to 
137 


138     MIRACULOUS  ELEMENT  IN  CHRISTIANITY 

some  perversions  of  morality,  it  is  because 
the  miraculous  elements,  and  the  circle  of 
ecclesiastical  dogma  which  under  the  theo- 
sophic  influences  of  the  succeeding  age  formed 
itself  around  them,  have  been  allowed  to 
overlay  and  obscure  the  character  and  teach- 
ing of  Jesus  of  Nazareth. 

The  author  of  Supernatural  Religion,  after 
demolishing,  as  he  conceives,  the  authority  of 
the  ecclesiastical  canon,  himself  says  of  the 
ethical  system  of  Christianity:  — 

"It  must  be  admitted  that  Christian  ethics 
were  not  in  their  details  either  new  or  origi- 
nal. The  precepts  which  distinguish  the 
system  may  be  found  separately  in  early 
religions,  in  ancient  philosophies,  and  in  the 
utterances  of  the  great  poets  and  seers  of 
Israel.  The  teaching  of  Jesus,  however,  car- 
ried morality  to  the  sublimest  point  attained 
or  even  attainable  by  humanity.  The  influence 
of  his  spiritual  religion  has  been  rendered 
doubly  great  by  the  unparalleled  purity  and 
elevation  of  his  own  character.  Surpassing 
in  his  sublime  simplicity  and  earnestness  the 
moral  grandeur  of  (jJh&kj'a-mouni,  and  putting 


MIRACULOUS  ELEMENT  IN  CHRISTIANITY     139 

to  the  blush  the  sometimes  sullied,  though 
generally  admirable,  teaching  of  Socrates  and 
Plato,  and  the  whole  round  of  Greek  philoso- 
phers, he  presented  the  rare  spectacle  of  a 
life,  so  far  as  we  can  estimate  it,  uniformly 
noble  and  consistent  with  his  own  lofty  prin- 
ciples, so  that  the  '  imitation  of  Christ '  has 
become  almost  the  final  word  in  the  preach- 
ing of  his  religion,  and  must  continue  to  be 
one  of  the  most  powerful  elements  of  its 
permanence.  His  system  might  not  be  new, 
but  it  was  in  a  high  sense  the  perfect  devel- 
opment of  natural  morality,  and  it  was  final 
in  this  respect  amongst  others,  that,  super- 
seding codes  of  law  and  elaborate  rules  of 
life,  it  confined  itself  to  two  fundamental 
principles:  love  to  God  and  love  to  man. 
Whilst  all  previous  systems  had  merely  sought 
to  purify  the  stream,  it  demanded  the  purifi- 
cation of  the  fountain.  It  placed  the  evil 
thought  on  a  par  with  the  evil  action.  Such 
morality,  based  upon  the  intelligent  and  ear- 
nest acceptance  of  divine  law,  and  perfect 
recognition  of  the  brotherhood  of  man,  is  the 
highest  conceivable  by  humanity,  and  although 


140      MIRACULOUS  ELEMENT  IN  CHRISTIANITY 

its  power  and  influence  must  augment  with 
the  increase  of  enlightenment,  it  is  itself  be- 
yond development,  consisting  as  it  does  of 
principles  unlimited  in  their  range  and  in- 
exhaustible in  their  application.  Its  perfect 
realization  is  that  true  spiritual  Nirv&wa  which 
Qhakya-mouni  has  clearly  conceived,  and  ob- 
scured with  Oriental  mysticism:  extinction 
of  rebellious  personal  opposition  to  divine 
order,  and  the  attainment  of  perfect  harmony 
with  the  will  of  God."1 

Of  the  four  religions  which  have  been  styled 
universal,  Christianity  alone  is  universal  in 
fact.  Christianity  alone  preaches  its  Gospel 
to  the  whole  world.  A  Buddhist  element  has 
recently  found  its  way  into  a  certain  school 
of  European  philosophy,  but  not  through  Bud- 
dhist preaching  or  under  a  Buddhist  form. 
Mahometanism  and  Buddhism  are  something 
more  than  local  or  tribal,  yet  less  than  uni- 
versal. Mahometanism  is  military,  as  its 
Koran  avows.  In  conquest  it  lives,  with  con- 
quest it  decays;  it  also  practically  belongs 
to  the  despotic,  polygamic,  and  slave-owning 

i  Vol.  II.,  pp.  487-8. 


MIRACULOUS  ELEMENT  IN  CHRISTIANITY     141 

East.  It  has  never  been  the  religion  of  a 
Western  race,  or  of  a  free  and  industrial  com- 
munity. By  arms  it  has  been  propagated,  or 
by  local  influence  and  contagion,  not  by  mis- 
sions. Buddhism,  if  it  is  really  a  religion 
and  not  rather  a  quietist  philosophy  engen- 
dered of  languor  and  suffering,  is  partly 
a  religion  of  climate  and  of  race;  of  its 
boasted  myriads  the  majority,  the  Chinese, 
retain  little  more  than  a  tincture  of  Buddha, 
while  all  are  enclosed  within  a  ring-fence  in 
a  particular  quarter  of  the  globe.  Its  Euro- 
pean offspring  is  a  philosophy  of  despair. 
Judaism,  after  its  rejection  of  Christianity, 
itself  fell  back  into  a  tribalism,  which  is  of 
all  tribalisms  morally  the  most  anti-social, 
since  it  is  not  primitive  and  natural  but  self- 
enforced  and  artificially  maintained  in  the  face 
of  humanity ;  while  the  proselytism  which  was 
rife  when  the  philosophic  Judaism  of  Philo  was 
verging  on  universality  has  since  that  epoch 
ceased.  It  is  to  be  noted  also  that  Christianity 
is  almost  alone  in  its  display  of  recuperative 
power.  No  parallel  to  the  revivals  of  Wycliff, 
Luther,  Calvin,  and  Wesley  is  presented  by  any 


142     MIRACULOUS  ELEMENT  IN  CHRISTIANITY 

other  religion.  The  "VVahabi  movement  will 
hardly  be  thought  as  a  spiritual  revival  to 
deserve  that  rank. 

Moral  civilization  and  sustained  progress 
have  been  thus  far  limited  to  Christendom. 
So  have  distinct  and  effective  ideas  of  human 
brotherhood,  which  implies  a  common  frater- 
nity, and  of  the  service  of  humanity.  In  Bud- 
dhism, if  they  have  been  distinct,  they  cannot 
be  said  to  have  been  equally  effective.  They 
seem  to  be  closely  connected  with  the  Christian 
idea  of  the  Church,  with  its  struggle  for  the 
emancipation  of  the  world  from  the  powers 
of  evil  and  with  its  hope  of  final  victory. 

Much,  therefore,  of  what  we  have  cherished 
would  still  stand  even  if  our  evidence  for  the 
miracles  should  fall. 

We  need  hardly  expend  thought  on  the 
discussion  as  to  the  possibility  of  believing 
in  miracles.  The  very  term  supposes  the 
existence  of  a  power  above  nature,  able  to 
reveal  itself  by  a  suspension  of  nature's  ordi- 
nary course  and  willing  so  to  reveal  itself  for 
the  salvation  of  mankind.  There  is  nothing 
apparently  repugnant  to  reason  in  such  a  sup- 


MIRACULOUS  ELEMENT  IN  CHRISTIANITY     143 

position.  The  existence  of  the  power  is  even 
implied  in  the  phrase  "  laws  of  nature "  con- 
stantly used  by  science;  for  wherever  there 
is  a  law  there  must  be  a  law-giver,  and  the 
law-giver  must  be  presumed  capable  of  sus- 
pending the  operation  of  law.  This  Hume 
himself  would  hardly  have  denied.  In  fact, 
the  metaphysical  argument  against  mira- 
cles comes,  as  has  been  said  before,  pretty 
much  to  this,  that  a  miracle  cannot  take 
place,  because  if  it  did  it  would  be  a  miracle. 
We  could  not  help  believing  our  own  senses 
if  we  actually  saw  a  man  raised  from  the 
dead.  There  is  no  reason  why  we  should  not 
believe  the  testimony  of  other  people,  pro- 
vided that  they  were  eye-witnesses,  that  they 
were  competent  in  character  and  in  intelli- 
gence, and  that  their  testimony  had  been 
submitted  to  impartial  and  thorough  investi- 
gation. Suppose  a  hundred  men  of  known 
character,  judgment,  and  scientific  attain- 
ments were  to  unite  in  declaring  that  they 
had  seen  a  blind  man  restored  to  sight  or  a 
man  raised  from  the  dead  in  circumstances 
precluding  the  possibility  of  fraud  or  illusion, 


144     MIRACULOUS  ELEMENT  IN  CHRISTIANITY 

should  we,  as  Hume  says,  at  once  reject  their 
testimony?  On  what  ground?  On  the  ground 
of  universal  experience?  Experience,  being 
only  previous  uniformity,  is  broken  by  a  well- 
attested  exception.  We  assume  an  adequate 
object,  such  as  the  revelation  to  man  of  vital 
truth  undiscoverable  by  his  own  intellect 
would  be.  It  is  simply  a  question  of  evi- 
dence. All  will  allow  that  we  require  either 
the  evidence  of  our  own  senses  or  an  extraor- 
dinary amount  of  unexceptionable  testimony 
to  warrant  us  in  accepting  a  miracle. 

That  the  Supreme  Being,  supposing  that 
he  intended  to  reveal  himself  by  miracle  for 
the  salvation  of  mankind,  and  required  belief 
in  the  miracle  as  the  condition  of  our  salva- 
tion, would  provide  us  with  conclusive  evi- 
dence, may  surely  be  assumed.  A  miracle  is 
an  appeal  to  our  reason  through  our  senses, 
and  to  make  it  valid  either  the  evidence  of 
our  own  senses,  or  evidence  equivalent  to 
that  of  our  own  senses,  is  required.  To  call 
upon  us  to  believe  without  sufficient  evidence 
would  be  to  put  an  end  to  belief  itself  in 
any  rational  sense  of  the  term.  Theologians 


MIRACULOUS  ELEMENT  IN  CHRISTIANITY     145 

always  take  advantage  of  proof  so  far  as  it 
is  forthcoming.  Faith,  to  which  they  have 
appealed  in  defect  of  proof,  is  a  belief,  not 
in  things  unproved,  but  in  things  unseen. 
Miracles  may  be  accepted  on  the  evidence  of 
a  church  assumed  to  be  itself  divine;  they 
may  even  be  accepted  on  the  supposed  evi- 
dence of  a  spiritual  sense  illuminated  by 
divine  influence;  but  if  we  are  to  accept 
them  on  the  evidence  of  reason,  there  must 
be  satisfactory  eye-witnesses.  What  ocular 
testimony  do  we  possess? 

In  the  fifteenth  chapter  of  the  first  Epistle 
to  the  Corinthians  St.  Paul  says  that  the 
risen  Christ  had  appeared  to  him.  He  says 
simply  appeared  (wfyOrj).  He  gives  no  par- 
ticulars nor  anything  which  can  enable  us  to 
judge  whether  the  apparition  was  certainly 
real,  or  whether  it  may  have  been  the  product 
of  ecstatic  imagination,  like  the  apparition 
seen  by  Colonel  Gardiner  or  those  which  made 
Coleridge  say  that  he  did  not  believe  in 
ghosts  because  he  had  seen  too  many  of  them. 
Three  detailed  accounts  of  the  vision  are 
given  in  the  Acts,  but  not  one  of  them  can 


146     MIRACULOUS  ELEMENT  IN  CHRISTIANITY 

be  traced  to  St.  Paul,  though  two  of  them 
are  put  into  his  mouth;  and  they  are  at  vari- 
ance with  each  other,  one  (Acts  ix.  7)  say- 
ing that  St.  Paul's  fellow-travellers  heard 
the  voice  but  saw  no  man;  another  (Acts 
xxii.  9)  saying  that  they  saw  the  light  but 
did  not  hear  the  voice;  while  the  utterances 
of  the  voice  itself  differ  widely  in  the  three 
passages  (compare  Acts  ix.  4-7,  with  Acts 
xxii.  7,  8,  and  more  especially  with  Acts 
xxvi.  14-19),  though  it  would  seem  that  the 
words  ought  to  have  made  an  indelible  im- 
pression; not  to  mention  that  "it  is  hard  for 
thee  to  kick  against  the  goad"  is  a  strange 
phrase  to  be  used  by  a  voice  from  heaven. 

In  the  same  passage  of  the  first  Epistle  to 
the  Corinthians  St.  Paul  states  "that  Christ 
died  for  our  sins  according  to  the  Scriptures ; 
that  he  was  buried;  that  he  had  been  raised 
on  the  third  day  according  to  the  Scriptures; 
that  he  had  appeared  unto  Cephas,  then  to  the 
twelve;  that  he  had  afterwards  appeared  to 
about  five  hundred  brethren  at  once,  of  whom 
the  greater  part  remained  till  that  time,  but 
some  were  fallen  asleep;  then  to  James;  then 


MIRACULOUS  ELEMENT  IN  CHRISTIANITY     147 

to  all  the  apostles."  It  is  natural  to  assume 
that  St.  Paul  learned  this  from  Peter  and 
James,  the  two  apostles  whom  he  saw  on  his 
first  visit  to  Jerusalem  after  his  conversion. 
But  he  does  not  cite  their  authority,  much 
less  does  he  say  that  he  had  taken  any  meas- 
ures to  sift  their  evidence.  Nor  is  it  likely 
that  he  would  have  taken  such  measures, 
being,  as  he  was,  an  ardent  proselyte  of 
three  years'  standing,  and  having  staked  his 
spiritual  life  on  the  resurrection  of  Christ. 
Here  again  he  uses  the  expression  "  appeared  " 
(W00?;),  and  leaves  us  once  more  to  speculate 
on  the  effect  of  enthusiasm  in  giving  birth  to 
visions  and  on  the  contagion  of  excited  im- 
agination. He  says  nothing  about  the  inter- 
course of  the  risen  Christ  with  his  Apostles 
during  the  days  preceding  the  Ascension.  Nor 
does  it  seem  easy  to  harmonize  his  story  with 
that  of  the  Gospels. 

Some  attestations  of  miracles  given  in  the 
Acts  are  in  the  first  person,  implying  that 
an  eye-witness  is  speaking.  The  eye-wit- 
ness, however,  is  anonymous,  and  we  have 
no  means  of  testing  his  trustworthiness.  The 


148      MIRACULOUS  ELEMENT  IN  CHRISTIANITY 

escape  of  St.  Paul  at  Melita  from  the  sting 
of  the  viper  which  had  come  out  of  the 
burning  sticks  and  fastened  on  his  hand, 
and  his  prophetic  reliance  upon  God  in  the 
shipwreck,  while  they  are  vividly  attested, 
can  hardly  be  called  miraculous. 

In  1  Corinthians  xii.  4-11,  St.  Paul  refers 
in  a  general  way  to  the  existence  of  miracu- 
lous gifts  among  members  of  the  Church  : 
"Now  there  are  diversities  of  gifts,  but 
the  same  Spirit.  And  there  are  diversities 
of  ministrations,  and  the  same  Lord.  And 
there  are  diversities  of  workings,  but  the 
same  God,  who  worketh  all  things  in  all. 
But  to  each  one  is  given  the  manifestation 
of  the  Spirit  to  profit  withal.  For  to  one  is 
given  through  the  Spirit  the  word  of  wis- 
dom; and  to  another  the  word  of  knowledge, 
according  to  the  same  Spirit:  to  another 
faith,  in  the  same  Spirit;  and  to  another 
gifts  of  healings,  in  the  one  Spirit;  and  to 
another  workings  of  miracles;  and  to  another 
prophecy;  and  to  another  discernings  of 
spirits:  to  another  divers  kinds  of  tongues; 
and  to  another  the  interpretation  of  tongues: 


MIRACULOUS  ELEMENT  IN  CHRISTIANITY     149 

but  all  these  worketh  the  one  and  the  same 
Spirit,  dividing  to  each  one  severally  even  as 
he  will."  Gifts  of  divers  kinds  of  tongues 
and  of  the  interpretation  of  tongues,  it  will 
be  observed,  are  put  on  a  level  with  the  rest, 
though  St.  Paul  himself  (1  Corinthians  xiv.) 
treats  those  gifts  as  equivocal,  and  we  know 
from  modern  experience  that  they  may  be  the 
offspring  of  self-delusion;  while  the  account 
of  the  gift  of  tongues  in  Acts  ii.  8,  as  that 
of  speaking  divers  known  languages,  is  at 
variance  with  the  words  of  St.  Paul,  who 
describes  it  as  that  of  speaking  in  a  tongue 
unknown  to  all.  St.  Paul  does  not  testify  to 
the  occurrence  of  any  specific  miracle  other 
than  his  own  vision,  nor  does  he  profess  to 
have  performed  a  specific  miracle  himself. 
His  general  appeal  is  not  to  miracles  but  to 
the  divine  character  and  merits  of  Christ. 

In  the  first  Epistle  of  St.  Peter  there  are 
allusions  (i.  3  and  iii.  18)  to  the  resurrec- 
tion of  Christ.  But  they  are  connected  with 
an  allusion  to  his  preaching  "unto  the  spirits 
in  prison,  which  aforetime  were  disobedient, 
when  the  longsuffering  of  God  waited  in 


150     MIRACULOUS  ELEMENT  IN  CHRISTIANITY 

the  days  of  Noah  while  the  ark  was  a  pre- 
paring"; a  tradition  which  implies  belief  in 
the  Noachic  legend,  while  its  character  seems 
to  militate  against  the  authenticity  of  the 
Epistle  as  the  work  of  a  companion  of 
Christ,  since  actual  contact  with  reality 
usually  sets  bounds  to  imagination.  In  the 
second  Epistle  of  St.  Peter  there  is  an  allu- 
sion to  the  Transfiguration.  But  the  authen- 
ticity of  the  second  Epistle  of  St.  Peter  is 
strongly  impugned  and  feebly  defended. 

The  testimony  comprised  in  the  above  pas- 
sages is,  apparently,  the  sum-total  of  the 
ocular  evidence  producible  for  the  miracu- 
lous part  of  Christianity.  Besides  this  there 
is  nothing  but  tradition  of  unknown  origin 
recorded  by  unknown  writers  at  a  date 
uncertain  and,  for  aught  that  we  can  tell, 
many  years  after  the  events.  The  four 
Gospels  are  anonymous.  Two  of  them,  the 
second  and  third,  are  not  even  ascribed  to 
eye-witnesses,  while  the  preface  to  the  third 
distinctly  implies  that  it  is  not  the  work  of 
an  eye-witness,  but  of  one  of  a  number  of 
compilers.  The  first  Gospel,  if  Matthew  were 


MIRACULOUS  ELEMENT  IN  CHRISTIANITY     151 

really  its  author,  would  be  the  work  of  an 
eye-witness.  But  it  seems  to  be  certainly 
attested  that  if  Matthew  wrote  a  Gospel  at 
all  it  was  in  Hebrew,  whereas  the  first  Gos- 
pel is  in  Greek  and  is  pronounced  to  be  not 
even  a  translation  from  the  Hebrew.  In  the 
fourth  Gospel  there  is  an  attestation;  but  it 
is  anonymous  and  suspicious,  serving  rather 
to  shake  than  to  confirm  our  belief  in  apos- 
tolic authorship;  for  why  should  not  the 
writer  himself  have  given  his  name  instead 
of  leaving  the  authenticity  to  be  attested  by 
an  unknown  hand  ?  Of  the  proof  tendered  for 
the  authenticity  of  this  Gospel  as  the  work 
of  St.  John,  it  may  safely  be  said  that  it  is 
not  such  as  would  be  accepted  in  the  case  of 
any  ordinary  work.  Of  the  most  recent 
experts  there  is  a  decided  and  apparently 
growing  majority  on  the  other  side.  The 
Apocalypse  as  well  as  the  Gospel  was 
ascribed  by  the  Church  to  St.  John,  and  as 
the  difference  of  character  and  style  is  such 
that  the  two  cannot  have  been  by  the  same 
hand,  whatever  makes  for  the  authenticity 
pf  the  Apocalypse  makes  against  the,  authen-i 


152     MIRACULOUS  ELEMENT  IN  CHRISTIANITY 

ticity  of  the  Gospel.  Nothing  can  seem  more 
unlikely  than  that  a  Gospel  tinctured  with 
Alexandrian  theosophy  should  be  the  work  of 
a  simple  fisherman  of  Galilee.  Nor  is  there 
any  similarity  between  the  character  of  John 
depicted  in  the  first  three  Gospels  and  that 
with  which  the  fourth  Gospel  is  suffused.  The 
writer's  attitude  of  aversion  towards  the  Jews 
and  his  references  to  their  laws  and  customs  as 
those  of  another  nation  are  scarcely  compatible 
with  the  supposition  that  he  was  himself  a  Jew. 
Not  one  of  the  four  Gospels  can  be  shown 
with  any  certainty  to  have  existed  in  its 
present  form  till  a  period  had  elapsed  after 
the  events  fully  sufficient,  in  a  totally  un- 
critical age,  for  the  growth  of  any  amount  of 
miraculous  legend,  as  the  biographies  of 
numerous  saints  in  the  Middle  Ages  prove. 
This  much  at  the  very  least  seems  to  have 
been  established  by  the  author  of  Super- 
natural Religion^  whose  main  argument,  as 
Matthew  Arnold  says,  is  not  to  be  shaken 
by  pursuing  him  into  minor  issues  and  dis- 
crediting him  there.  It  is  alleged  that  the 
Gospels  must  have  been  written  before  the 


MIRACULOUS  ELEMENT  IN  CHRISTIANITY     153 

destruction  of  Jerusalem,  because  they  do  not 
refer  to  that  catastrophe  but  seem  to  speak 
of  the  "altar"  as  if  it  were  still  existing. 
The  answer  appears  to  be  that  if  the  tradi- 
tions worked  up  by  the  Evangelists  were 
anterior  to  the  fall  of  Jerusalem,  there  is  no 
reason  why  that  event  should  be  imported 
into  them.  Legends  do  not  ordinarily  men- 
tion intervening  events.  Besides,  there  does 
appear  in  Matthew  xxiv.  and  Mark  xiii.  to 
be  an  allusion  to  the  flight  of  the  Christians 
in  the  day  of  conflict. 

In  the  narratives  of  the  first  three  Evan- 
gelists, there  is  found  a  large  common  ele- 
ment. It  appears  that  if  the  whole  text  of 
the  Synoptics  is  broken  up  into  one  hun- 
dred and  seventy-four  sections,  fifty-eight  of 
these  are  common  to  all  three;  twenty-six 
besides  to  Matthew  and  Mark;  seventeen  to 
Mark  and  Luke;  thirty-two  to  Matthew  and 
Luke;  leaving  only  forty-one  unshared  ele- 
ments, of  which  thirty-one  are  found  in 
Luke,  seven  in  Matthew,  and  three  in  Mark.1 

1  Martineau,  Seat  of  Authority  in  Religion,  p.  184.  See 
also  the  following  pages. 


164     MIRACULOUS  ELEMENT  IN  CHRISTIANITY 

This  similarity  in  the  selection  of  a  limited 
portion  of  the  Life,  combined  with  the  actual 
identity  of  language  in  so  many  passages,  has 
been  justly  thought  to  preclude  the  hypothesis 
of  independent  authorship  and  to  suggest  com- 
pilation on  a  common  basis.  There  must  on 
that  supposition  have  been  an  interval  of  time 
between  the  events  and  the  compilation  during 
which  the  common  basis  was  formed. 

It  is  surely  incredible  that  divine  Provi- 
dence, intending  to  consign  facts  on  the 
knowledge  of  which  the  salvation  of  man 
depended  to  particular  writings,  should  not 
have  placed  the  authorship  and  date  of  those 
writings  beyond  a  doubt. 

Not  one  of  the  four  Evangelists  claims 
inspiration.  The  author  of  the  third  Gospel 
seems  distinctly  to  renounce  it,  putting  his 
narrative  on  a  level  with  a  number  of  others, 
over  which  he  asserts  his  superiority,  if  at 
all,  only  in  carefulness  of  investigation.  The 
Church,  however,  has  treated  all  four  Gospels 
as  equally  inspired.  Papias  on  the  other  hand, 
in  the  middle  of  the  second  century,  seems  to 
recognize  no  Gospel  as  inspired,  holding  that 


MIRACULOUS  ELEMENT  IN  CHRISTIANITY     155 

nothing  derived  from  books  was  so  profitable 
as  the  living  voice  of  tradition. 

There  would  be  a  natural  and  almost  over- 
whelming temptation  to  ascribe  an  anony- 
mous and  popular  history  of  Christ  to  one  of 
the  apostles;  and  this  would  be  done  in  an 
uncritical  age  without  any  thought  of  fraud. 
It  is  true  that  we  accept  without  question 
the  works  of  Tacitus  and  other  ancient  his- 
torians, though  anonymous,  as  those  of  their 
reputed  authors.  But  in  these  cases  there 
was  no  temptation  to  false  ascription,  nor 
does  it  greatly  signify  who  wrote  the  his- 
tory, the  facts  neither  requiring  an  extraor- 
dinary amount  of  evidence,  nor  being  vital  to 
the  salvation  of  mankind. 

Of  some  of  the  miraculous  parts  of  the 
Gospel,  such,  for  instance,  as  the  Temptation 
in  the  Wilderness,  and  the  Agony  in  the 
Garden,  with  the  descent  of  the  angel,  there 
could  be  no  eye-witnesses.  Of  the  Annuncia- 
tion and  the  Immaculate  Conception  the  only 
possible  witness  tells  us  nothing.  It  is  hard 
indeed  to  see  how  we  could  have  eye-wit- 
nesses to  anything  which  happened  before 


166     MIRACULOUS  ELEMENT  IN  CHRISTIANITY 

the  calling  of  the  apostles.  Who  can  have 
reported  to  the  Evangelist  the  canticles  of 
Mary,  Zacharias,  and  Simeon?  Here  surely 
we  are  dealing  with  legend  and  poetry,  not 
with  historic  fact. 

Between  the  narratives  of  the  different 
Gospels  there  are  discrepancies  which  baffle 
the  harmonists.  Between  the  narratives  of 
the  Resurrection  and  the  events  which  follow 
there  are  discrepancies  which  drive  the  har- 
monists to  despair.  There  are  contradictions 
as  to  the  names  of  the  apostles,  the  behav- 
iour of  the  two  thieves  at  the  Crucifixion, 
the  attendance  at  the  cross.  There  is  a  con- 
tradiction with  regard  to  the  miracle  at 
Gadara,  one  Gospel  giving  a  single  demo- 
niac, the  other  a  pair.  Three  Gospels  treat 
Galilee,  the  fourth  Judea,  as  the  chief  centre 
of  the  ministry.  One  Gospel  gives,  another 
omits,  such  incidents  as  the  Annunciation, 
the  Adoration  of  the  Magi,  the  Temptation, 
the  Transfiguration,  the  raising  of  Lazarus, 
and  the  conversation  with  the  woman  of 
Samaria;  while  the  suggestion  that  the  nar- 
ratives were  intended  to  supplement  each 


MIRACULOUS  ELEMENT  IN  CHRISTIANITY     157 

other  is  gratuitous  in  itself,  and  is  repelled 
by  the  existence  of  a  large  common  element 
in  the  first  three.  But  the  most  notable 
discrepancy  of  all  perhaps  is  that  respecting 
the  day  of  the  Crucifixion,  and  the  character 
of  the  Last  Supper.  The  first  three  Gospels 
make  Christ  eat  the  Passover  with  his  dis- 
ciples and  suffer  on  the  day  following;  the 
fourth  puts  the  Crucifixion  on  the  day  of 
the  Preparation  for  the  Passover,  suggesting 
that  Christ  was  the  Paschal  Lamb  sacrificed 
for  the  sins  of  the  world.  In  the  first  three 
Gospels  the  Last  Supper  plainly  is  the  Pass- 
over; in  the  fourth  it  as  plainly  is  not.  To 
force  the  two  accounts  into  agreement  des- 
perate expedients,  such  as  the  supposition 
of  a  religious  meal,  not  identical  with  the 
Passover  but  identical  with  the  Last  Supper, 
have  been  tried.  But  God  would  scarcely 
have  left  inspired  narratives  of  an  event  on 
which  human  salvation  was  to  depend  to  be 
reconciled  by  extreme  expedients  invented 
eighteen  centuries  afterwards  by  learned  and 
ingenious  minds.  Unless  the  two  accounts 
can  be  reconciled,  it  is  obvious  that  the 


158      MIRACULOUS  ELEMENT  IN  CHRISTIANITY 

author  of  one  of  them  can  have  been  no  eye- 
witness nor  even  well-informed. 

It  is  idle  to  contend  that  such  discrepan- 
cies are  of  a  minor  kind  and  the  ordinary 
variations  of  human  testimony,  even  on  the 
strange  supposition  that  the  Holy  Spirit 
would  either  lapse  into  the  infirmities  of 
human  testimony  or  simulate  them  in  dic- 
tating the  Gospel  narrative.  They  are  such 
as  would  certainly  invalidate  human  testi- 
mony to  any  extraordinary  event. 

Between  the  general  representation  of 
Christ's  character  and  teaching  in  the  first 
three  Gospels  and  that  in  the  fourth,  there 
is  marked  divergence.  The  teaching  in  the 
first  three  is  generally  ethical,  in  the  fourth 
it  is  theological.  The  character  of  Christ  in 
the  first  is  that  of  a  divine  teacher;  in  the 
fourth  it  is  that  of  the  second  Person  in  the 
Trinity  and  the  Logos.  The  fourth  Gos- 
pel has,  indeed,  in  modern  times  been  pre- 
ferred to  the  other  three  on  account  of  its 
specially  theological  character  and  its  spir- 
itual elevation.  When  we  find  a  similar 
divergence  between  the  Xenophontic  and  the 


MIRACULOUS  ELEMENT  IN  CHRISTIANITY     159 

Platonic  Socrates,  we  conclude  that  the  Pla- 
tonic Socrates  is  largely  the  creation  of  Plato. 
Testimony  is  plainly  invalidated  by  the  ascen- 
dency of  imagination. 

Sufficient  attention  seems  hardly  to  have 
been  paid  to  the  adverse  weight  of  negative 
evidence.  A  teacher  who  has  been  drawing 
all  eyes  upon  him  by  his  words  and  by  a  course 
of  stupendous  miracles,  culminating  in  the 
raising  from  the  dead  of  a  man  who  had  been 
four  days  in  the  grave,  enters  Jerusalem  amidst 
the  acclamations  of  a  vast  concourse  of  people. 
He  is  brought  before  the  Sanhedrim  and  after- 
wards tried  in  the  most  public  manner  before 
the  Roman  governor.  The  governor's  wife  is 
warned  about  him  in  a  dream.  He  is  crucified, 
and  when  he  expires  miraculous  darkness  covers 
the  earth  for  three  hours,  the  earth  quakes,  the 
veil  of  the  temple  is  rent  in  twain  from  the 
top  to  the  bottom,  the  tombs  are  opened,  and 
bodies  of  the  saints  that  slept  come  forth 
out  of  the  grave,  enter  into  the  holy  city, 
and  appear  to  many.  The  Roman  centurion 
and  the  watch  are  impressed,  and  say  that 
this  truly  was  the  Son  of  God.  But  other- 


160     MIRACULOUS  ELEMENT  IN  CHRISTIANITY 

wise  no  impression  is  made,  no  notice  of 
these  tremendous  events  seems  to  be  taken, 
no  trace  of  them  is  left  in  general  history,1 
no  one  apparently  is  converted,  not  even 
Saul.  The  Jews,  of  whose  acts  this  was  an 
overwhelming  condemnation,  are  so  little 
impressed  that  they  think  only  of  bribing  the 
watch  to  confess  that  the  body  of  Jesus  had 
been  stolen  from  the  tomb. 

We  cannot  pick  and  choose.  The  evidence 
upon  which  the  miraculous  darkness  and  the 
apparitions  of  the  dead  rest  is  the  same  as 
that  upon  which  all  the  other  miracles  rest, 
and  must  be  accepted  or  rejected  in  all  the 
cases  alike. 

The  Acts,  like  the  Gospels,  is  anonymous, 
and  if  its  author  is  identical  with  the  author 
of  the  third  Gospel,  this  shows  that  he 
was  not  an  eye-witness  of  the  Resurrection. 
An  examination  of  its  internal  difficulties 

1  Gibbon,  who  has  not  failed  to  make  the  point,  though 
he  has  hardly  pushed  the  argument  home,  observes  that  the 
preternatural  darkness  happened  in  the  time  of  Pliny,  the 
naturalist,  and  of  Seneca,  who  wrote  a  collection  of  natural 
facts  in  seven  books,  and  is  not  mentioned  by  either  of  them. 
Pliny,  however,  would  be  a  boy  at  that  date. 


MIRACULOUS  ELEMENT  IN  CHRISTIANITY     161 

would  be  beside  our  present  purpose,  which  is 
to  ascertain  the  amount  and  value  of  the  ocular 
testimony  to  the  miracles.  It  seems  to  be  ad- 
mitted that  there  is  no  positive  and  unequiv- 
ocal evidence  of  the  existence  of  this  book 
till  towards  the  end  of  the  second  century. 

Is  it  conceivable  that  Providence  would 
allow  vital  truth,  or  anything  essential  to 
our  belief  in  vital  truth,  to  be  stamped  with 
the  mark  of  falsehood?  The  demoniac  mira- 
cles are  clearly  stamped  with  the  mark  of 
Jewish  superstition.  To  the  imagination  of 
the  Jews  at  this  period,  spirits  good  and  evil 
were  everywhere  present.  They  were  with 
you  in  the  lecture-room;  they  were  with 
you  in  every  function  of  life.  From  the 
fourth  Gospel  demoniac  miracles  are  absent, 
not  because  that  Gospel  is  supplementary,  a 
supposition  for  which,  as  was  before  said, 
there  is  no  sort  of  colour,  but  because  the 
first  three  Gospels  were  written  for  Jewish 
readers  to  whom  demoniac  miracles  were  con- 
genial, while  the  fourth  Gospel  was  written 
for  an  intellectual  circle  to  which  they  were 
not  congenial,  and  perhaps  at  a  later  day. 


162     MIRACULOUS  ELEMENT  IN  CHRISTIANITY 

According  to  Mark,  Jesus  casts  a  legion 
of  devils  out  of  a  man  into  a  herd  of  two 
thousand  swine,  which  forthwith  rush  down 
into  the  sea  and  are  drowned.  The  comment 
of  an  orthodox  writer  of  great  eminence  upon 
this  astounding  and  repellent  miracle  is 
this:  "That  the  demoniac  was  healed  — 
that  in  the  terrible  final  paroxysm  which 
usually  accompanied  the  deliverance  from 
this  strange  and  awful  malady,  a  herd  of 
swine  was  in  some  way  affected  with  such 
wild  terror  as  to  rush  headlong  in  large 
numbers  over  a  steep  hillside  into  the  waters 
of  the  lake  —  and  that,  in  the  minds  of  all 
who  were  present,  including  that  of  the  suf- 
ferer himself,  this  precipitate  rushing  of  the 
swine  was  connected  with  the  man's  release 
from  his  demoniac  thraldom  —  thus  much  is 
clear."1  Such  attempts  to  minimize  the 
miracles  or  reduce  them  within  the  compass 
of  possible  belief  are  common  in  writings 
of  liberal  theologians,  especially  of  Germans. 
In  the  miracle  of  the  conversion  of  water 
into  wine  at  Cana,  Olshausen  would  have  us 
1  The  Life  of  Christ,  by  Frederic  W.  Farrar,  L,  337. 


MIRACULOUS  ELEMENT  IN  CHRISTIANITY     163 

suppose  that  we  have  only  an  accelerated 
operation  of  nature;  Neander,  that  the  water 
was  magnetized;  Lange,  that  the  guests  were 
in  a  state  of  supernatural  exaltation.  With 
regard  to  the  acceleration  hypothesis,  a  criti- 
cal physicist  has  remarked  that  nature  alone, 
whatever  time  you  give  her,  will  never  make 
thirty  imperial  gallons  of  wine  without  at 
least  ten  pounds  of  carbon. 

What  is  hard  to  believe  in  the  miracle  of 
Bethesda,  the  liberal  theologian  escapes  by 
remarking  that  there  is  no  indication  in  the 
narrative  that  any  one  who  used  the  water 
was  at  once  or  miraculously  healed;  that  the 
repeated  use  of  an  intermittent  and  gaseous 
spring,  a  character  which  more  than  one  of 
the  springs  about  Jerusalem  continue  to  bear 
to  the  present  day,  was,  doubtless,  likely  to 
produce  most  beneficial  results.  He  further 
suggests  that  it  was  as  much  the  man's  will 
that  was  paralyzed  as  his  limbs.  Of  the  troub- 
ling of  the  water  by  the  angel,  apologists  are 
glad  to  be  rid  by  dismissing  it  as  a  popular 
legend,  interpolated  into  the  text  of  St.  John. 
But  so  long  as  anything  miraculous  is  left  the 


164     MIRACULOUS  ELEMENT  IN  CHRISTIANITY 

difficulty  of  proof  remains;  while  if  nothing 
miraculous  is  left  there  is  an  end  of  this  dis- 
cussion. Nor,  it  must  be  repeated,  can  we 
pick  and  choose  among  the  miracles,  as  some 
are  evidently  inclined  to  do.  The  evidence 
for  the  miracle  of  the  demoniac  and  the  swine 
is  just  the  same  as  that  for  any  other  miracle. 
All  rest  upon  the  same  testimony  and  must 
stand  or  fall  together. 

Jewish  belief  both  in  angels  and  devils  is 
entwined  with  the  history  of  the  first  three 
Gospels;  the  archangel  Gabriel,  with  a  He- 
brew name,  announces  the  birth  of  Christ; 
angels  proclaim  it  to  the  shepherds;  angels 
appear  again  at  the  tomb  of  Christ;  Satan 
comes  in  person  to  tempt  Christ  in  the  wil- 
derness. There  are  angels  in  the  fourth 
Gospel,  but  there  is  no  personal  Satan. 

From  the  preface  to  the  third  Gospel  it 
appears  that  many  had  drawn  up  narratives 
concerning  the  life  of  Christ.  Upon  what 
principle  the  four  were  selected  by  the 
Church  as  inspired  and  authoritative  we  can- 
not tell.  Irenaeus  said  that  as  there  were 
four  quarters  of  the  world  and  four  chief 


MIRACULOUS  ELEMENT  IN  CHRISTIANITY      165 

winds,  the  Gospels,  which  were  to  be  coex- 
tensive with  the  world  and  to  be  the  breath 
of  life  to  its  inhabitants,  must  be  four.  Be- 
sides, the  Gospel  was  given  by  him  who  sits 
above  the  fourfold  cherubim,  four  was  the 
number  of  the  Beasts,  and  four  were  God's 
covenants  through  Adam,  Noah,  Moses,  and 
Christ.  It  is  probable  that  these  four  narra- 
tives survived  by  their  intrinsic  merits.  But 
for  their  authenticity  little  security  can  be 
found  in  the  critical  faculty  or  discernment 
of  the  patristic  age. 

Miraculous  Christianity  involves  anti-sci- 
entific ideas  of  the  world.  It  assumes  that 
the  earth  is  the  centre  of  the  universe  with 
the  heaven,  which  is  the  abode  of  the  Deity, 
stretched  above  it,  and  Hades  sunk  beneath 
it.  The  angels  and  the  mystic  dove  descend 
from  the  skies,  and  the  risen  Christ  ascends 
to  them.  When  Satan  shows  Christ  all  the 
kingdoms  of  the  earth  from  a  high  mountain, 
the  writer  seems  to  take  the  globe  for  a 
plane.  The  theological  geocentricism,  which 
makes  our  planet  the  centre  of  all  interest, 
the  especial  care  of  the  Divinity,  and  the  sole 


166     MIRACULOUS  ELEMENT  IN  CHRISTIANITY 

field  of  divine  action,  appears  in  the  Johan- 
nine  doctrine  of  the  Trinity.  It  might  be 
possible  to  imagine  Deity  stooping  from  a 
limited  heaven  to  redeem  the  inhabitants  of 
earth.  It  would  have  been  hardly  possible 
to  imagine  a  Being  who  fills  eternity  and 
infinity  becoming,  for  the  redemption  of  one 
speck  in  the  universe,  an  embryo  in  the 
womb  of  a  Jewish  maiden.  For  this  stupen- 
dous doctrine  our  principal  evidence  is  the 
anonymous  work  of  a  mystic  writer. 

The  Incarnation,  it  will  be  observed,  is 
the  centre  of  this  whole  circle  of  miracles. 
Without  it  they  can  be  hardly  said  to  have 
a  purpose  or  a  meaning.  But  since  our  rejec- 
tion of  the  authenticity  and  authority  of  the 
book  of  Genesis,  the  purpose  and  meaning  of 
the  Incarnation  itself  have  been  withdrawn. 
If  there  was  no  Fall  of  Man,  there  can  be  no 
need  of  the  Redemption.  If  there  was  no 
need  of  the  Redemption,  there  can  have  been 
no  motive  for  the  Incarnation.  The  whole 
ecclesiastical  scheme  of  salvation  with  all  its 
miraculous  appurtenances  apparently  falls  to 
the  ground.  This  is  a  vital  point. 


MIRACULOUS  ELEMENT  IN  CHRISTIANITY     167 

In  the  story  of  the  Star  of  the  Nativity 
primitive  astronomy  and  astrology  are  involved. 
It  is  useless  to  attempt  scientific  explana- 
tions, such  as  a  remarkable  conjunction  of 
the  planets,  or  the  temporary  appearance 
and  sudden  extinction  of  a  star.  The  Magi, 
as  astrologers,  recognize  the  star  of  Christ; 
it  moves  before  them  as  a  guide,  regardless 
of  the  general  march  of  planets  or  the  sidereal 
system,  and  stops  over  the  cradle  in  which 
the  child  of  destiny  lies. 

There  is  one  class  of  the  miraculous  evi- 
dences respecting  which  we  have  undoubtedly 
the  means  of  forming  our  own  judgment. 
We  can  tell  whether  there  was  really  a 
miraculous  fulfilment  of  Hebrew  prophecies 
in  the  history  of  Jesus.  To  the  alleged 
prophecy  that  Christ  should  be  called  a 
Nazarene,  there  is  nothing  whatsoever  corre- 
sponding in  the  Old  Testament.  Apologists, 
after  trying  such  expedients  as  the  identifica- 
tion of  Nazarene  with  Nazarite,  which  even 
if  it  were  feasible  would  help  them  but 
little,  Christ  having  fulfilled  none  of  the 
conditions  of  a  Nazarite,  are  fain  to  give  up 


168     MIRACULOUS  ELEMENT  IN  CHRISTIANITY 

the  problem  in  despair.  But  once  more  it 
must  be  said  that  we  cannot  pick  and 
choose.  Our  assurance  of  the  miraculous 
fulfilment  of  an  Old  Testament  prophecy  in 
this  and  the  other  cases  is  the  same,  while  it 
is  impossible  to  think  that  the  Holy  Spirit 
would  either  purposely  misquote  or  lapse  into 
involuntary  misquotation.  In  Matthew  xxi. 
5-7,  the  supposed  fulfilment  of  the  prophecy 
is  founded  upon  a  literary  error  into  which 
a  writer  acquainted  with  Hebrew  literature 
could  hardly  have  fallen.  The  "  ass  "  and  the 
"colt,  the  foal  of  an  ass,"  are  in  the  Hebrew 
not  two  things  but  two  expressions  for  the 
same  thing,  and  we  have  before  us  not  only 
a  misconstruction,  but,  as  it  is  hardly  possible 
that  Jesus  could  have  ridden  at  once  upon 
the  ass  and  upon  the  foal,  a  probable  adapta- 
tion of  the  history  to  the  fulfilment  of  the 
supposed  prophecy.  The  same  may  be  said 
with  regard  to  the  alleged  fulfilment  of  the 
Scripture  in  John  xix.  24,  where  the  words 
of  the  Psalm,  "They  parted  my  garment 
among  them,  and  upon  my  vesture  did  they 
cast  lots,"  are  taken  as  denoting  two  actions, 


MIRACULOUS  ELEMENT  IN  CHRISTIANITY     169 

when  they  are  a  double  expression,  after  the 
manner  of  Hebrew  poetry,  for  one.  "I  called 
my  son  out  of  Egypt,"  as  it  stands  in  Hosea 
xi.  1,  can  by  no  ingenuity  be  referred  to  any- 
thing but  the  Exodus,  not  to  mention  the 
strong  suspicion  which  here  again  is  raised 
of  a  story  framed  to  correspond  with  the  sup- 
posed prophecy.  "Behold  a  virgin  shall  con- 
ceive and  bear  a  son,"  in  Isaiah  vii.  14,  is 
evidently  a  sign  given  by  the  prophet  in 
relation  to  a  crisis  of  contemporary  history, 
and  has  plainly  not  the  remotest  connection 
with  the  immaculate  conception  of  Jesus. 
Messianic  predictions,  such  as  "The  sceptre 
shall  not  depart  from  Judah  nor  the  ruler's 
staff  from  between  his  feet  until  Shiloh  come, 
and  unto  him  shall  the  obedience  of  the 
peoples  be,"  not  only  were  not  fulfilled  but 
were  contradicted  by  the  history  of  Jesus, 
who  was  not  a  temporal  ruler  or  deliverer, 
and  was  therefore  not  recognized  as  the  Mes- 
siah by  the  Jews.  None  in  short  of  the 
so-called  prophecies  will  be  found  to  be 
more  than  applications,  and  many  of  them  as 
applications  are  far  fetched.  This  is  true 


170     MIRACULOUS  ELEMENT  IN  CHRISTIANITY 

even  of  the  most  remarkable  of  the  number, 
the  description  of  the  oppressed  and  sorrow- 
ing servant  of  Jehovah,  in  Isaiah  liii.  3, 
the  author  of  which  cannot  be  said  to  have 
distinctly  foretold  anything  in  the  history 
of  Jesus,  even  if  we  take  Jesus  to  have 
been  so  preeminently  a  man  of  sorrows,  a 
point  on  which  a  word  will  be  presently 
said.  In  no  single  case  can  Jesus,  or 
any  event  of  his  life,  be  said  to  have  been 
present  to  the  mental  eye  of  the  prophet.  In 
fact,  divines  of  the  more  rationalistic  school 
are  retiring  from  the  ground  of  miraculous 
prophecy  to  that  of  ethical  application,  a 
movement  parallel  to  that  which  they  are 
performing  in  the  case  of  the  miracles  by 
substituting  natural  causes,  as  far  as  they 
can,  for  divine  interruption  of  the  course  of 
nature.  But  applications,  even  if  they  are 
apposite,  are  not  prophecies.  A  similar  set 
might  probably  be  framed  for  almost  any 
marked  character  of  history  in  a  nation  pos- 
sessed of  an  ancient  literature.  On  this  ques- 
tion, as  on  that  of  miracles,  orthodoxy  retreats, 
covering  its  movement  with  language  which, 


MIRACULOUS  ELEMENT  IN  CHRISTIANITY     171 

while  it  renounces  inspiration,  clings  with- 
out any  definite  reason  to  the  belief  in  some- 
thing which  is  not  human  but  divine. 

The  martyrdoms  of  the  apostles,  it  has  been 
said,  are  testimony  of  the  miracles,  since 
without  the  assurance  of  the  miracles  the 
pains  of  martyrdom  would  not  have  been 
faced.  This  history  contradicts.  To  say  noth- 
ing of  the  persecutions  endured  under  Nero 
and  Diocletian,  when  belief  in  miracles  still 
lived,  we  have  instances  in  abundance  at 
the  time  of  the  Reformation  of  martyrdom 
undergone  for  the  doctrine  of  the  reformers, 
though  no  miracles  were  even  alleged  to  have 
taken  place.  Nor  are  such  cases  confined  to 
the  Christian  pale.  The  sect  of  the  Babis  in 
Persia  has  in  recent  times  undergone  the  most 
cruel  persecution,  not  only  without  the  sup- 
port of  miracles  but  for  a  faith  which  Chris- 
tians pronounce  false.  Servetus  died  for 
Socinianism,  and  Giordano  Bruno  for  scep- 
ticism. St.  Paul  endured  a  life  of  martyr- 
dom, but  evidently  it  was  for  love  of  Christ 
and  for  the  faith.  That  Christ  had  risen  was 
an  essential  part  of  his  faith,  and  it  is  in  this 


172     MIRACULOUS  ELEMENT  IN  CHRISTIANITY 

aspect,  rather  than  as  a  confirmatory  miracle, 
that  it  presents  itself  to  the  mind  of  Paul. 

No  man  of  comprehensive  mind,  unless  it 
be  Renan  in  his  dealing  with  the  raising  of 
Lazarus,  has  taken  the  miracles  for  creations 
of  fraud.  They  are  the  offspring  of  a  child- 
like fancy  in  a  totally  uncritical  age.  They 
are  a  halo  which  naturally  grew  round  the 
head  of  the  adored  Teacher  and  Founder,  as 
it  grew  round  the  head  of  every  mediaeval 
saint.  That  world  teemed  with  miracle,  both 
divine  and  diabolical.  Jesus  himself  is  rep- 
resented as  recognizing  miracles  of  both 
kinds.  He  challenges  his  opponents  to  say, 
if  he  by  Beelzebub  casts  out  devils,  by  whom 
do  their  sons  cast  them  out.  Instead  of  a 
disposition  to  criticise,  there  was  a  domi- 
nant predisposition  to  accept.  If  in  the 
country  of  Descartes  highly  educated  men 
could  believe  in  the  miracles  wrought  at  the 
tomb  of  the  saintly  Deacon  Paris,  how  much 
more  easily  could  Galilean  peasants,  or  sim- 
ple-minded disciples  of  whatever  race,  believe 
in  the  miracles  ascribed,  perhaps  long  after 
his  death,  to  Jesus?  Dr.  Arnold  asked 


MIRACULOUS  ELEMENT  IN  CHRISTIANITY     173 

whether  it  was  possible  that  there  should  be 
myths  in  the  age  of  Tacitus.  The  age  of 
Tacitus  it  was,  but  not  the  country;  though 
even  in  the  country  of  Tacitus  miraculous 
signs  attended  the  births  or  deaths  of  Csesars, 
and  Tacitus  himself  records  miracles  reported 
to  have  been  performed  by  Vespasian,  in 
which,  however,  nobody  believes.  The  Jews 
were  further  prepared  for  the  acceptance  of 
fresh  miracles  by  their  traditional  acceptance 
of  those  of  the  Old  Testament.  So  devoid 
were  they  of  any  conception  of  natural  law, 
or  of  anything  except  a  direct  action  of  Deity, 
that  with  them  a  miracle  would  hardly  be 
miraculous. 

If  we  must  resign  the  miracles,  the  Mes- 
sianic prophecies  with  their  supposed  fulfil- 
ment in  Christ,  and  the  Trinitarian  creed, 
what  remains  to  us  of  the  Gospel?  There 
remain  to  us  the  Character,  the  sayings,  and 
the  parables,  which  made  and  have  sustained 
moral,  though  not  ritualistic,  dogmatic,  or 
persecuting,  Christendom.  There  remain 
the  supremacy  of  conscience  over  law  and 
the  recognition  of  motive  as  that  which 


174     MIRACULOUS  ELEMENT  IN  CHRISTIANITY 

determines  the  quality  of  action.  The 
character  is  only  impaired  as  the  model 
and  guiding  star  of  humanity  by  supposing 
that  it  was  preterhuman.  We  cannot  even 
conceive  the  union  of  two  natures,  divine 
and  human,  though  we  may  mechanically 
repeat  the  form  of  words.  The  sayings  of 
Christ  would  be  not  less  true  or  applicable 
if  they  had  been  cast  ashore  by  the  tide  of 
time  without  anything  to  designate  their 
source.  The  parable  of  the  prodigal  son, 
that  of  the  labourers  in  the  vineyard,  or 
that  of  the  Good  Samaritan,  would  touch  our 
hearts  whoever  might  be  deemed  their  author. 
There  remains,  moreover,  the  ethical  beauty 
of  the  Gospels  themselves,  unapproachable 
after  its  kind.  Their  miracles  are  miracles 
of  mercy,  not  of  destruction,  like  many  of  the 
miracles  of  the  Old  Testament.  When  James 
and  John  propose  to  perform  an  Old  Testa- 
ment miracle  by  commanding  fire  to  come 
down  from  heaven  and  destroy  an  inhospita- 
ble village,  they  are  rebuked  and  told  they 
know  not  of  what  manner  of  spirit  they  are. 
In  this  sense  it  may  be  said  that  the  mira- 


MIRACULOUS  ELEMENT  IN  CHRISTIANITY     175 

cles  confirm  the  Gospel  and  the  Gospel  con- 
firms the  miracles.  The  Inquisition,  to  justify 
its  existence,  could  find  among  Christ's  words 
none  more  apposite  than  "Compel  them  to 
come  in,"  said  by  the  giver  of  the  feast  in 
the  parable.  The  halo  of  miracle  is  worthy 
of  the  figure.  If  there  is  a  Supreme  Being, 
and  if  he  is  anywhere  manifest  in  human 
history,  it  is  here. 

A  biography  of  Christ  there  cannot  be. 
There  are  no  genuine  materials  for  it,  as 
Strauss  truly  says.  Four  compilations  of 
legend  cannot  be  pieced  together  so  as  to 
make  the  history  of  a  life.  No  ingenuity 
can  produce  a  chronological  sequence  of 
scene  such  as  a  biographer  requires.  The 
"Lives,"  so  called,  are  merely  the  four  Gos- 
pels cut  into  shreds,  which  are  forced  into 
some  sort  of  order,  while,  to  impart  to 
the  narrative  an  air  of  reality,  it  is  pro- 
fusely decked  out  with  references  to  local 
scenery,  allusions  to  national  customs,  and 
Hebrew  names.  Each  biographer  gives  us 
a  Christ  according  to  his  own  prepossessions ; 
Roman  Catholic,  Anglican,  Protestant,  or 


176      MIRACULOUS  ELEMENT  IN  CHRISTIANITY 

Rationalist.  The  Roman  Catholic  priest  pre- 
sents him  as  a  living  crucifix ;  the  New  York 
minister  as  a  divine  preacher.  Renan's  Life 
of  Jesus,  though  it  is  exquisite  as  a  work  of 
literary  art,  as  a  biography  is  worth  no  more 
than  the  rest.  It  has  no  critical  basis,  and 
the  facts  are  arbitrarily  selected  and  arranged 
in  virtue  of  a  learned  insight  which  Renan 
supposes  himself  to  possess.  Nothing  is 
more  arbitrary  than  the  selection  of  the  rais- 
ing of  Lazarus  as  an  example  of  pious  fraud. 
Nor  does  Renan's  work  escape  the  idiosyn- 
crasy of  the  writer.  We  find  in  it  a  touch 
of  sentimentality,  or  even  of  something  ver- 
ging on  the  sensuous,  which  bespeaks  a 
Parisian  hand. 

Did  Jesus  give  himself  out  or  allow  his 
followers  to  designate  him  as  the  Messiah? 
It  is  impossible  to  tell.  All  that  we  can  say 
is  that  his  disciples,  and  not  only  those 
whose  traditions  are  embodied  in  the  first 
Gospel,  desired  to  identify  him  with  the  hope 
of  Israel  and  applied  or  wrested  passages  of 
the  Old  Testament  to  that  intent.  With 
that  object  evidently  were  produced,  by  two 


MIRACULOUS  ELEMENT  IN  CHRISTIANITY     177 

different  hands,  the  two  genealogies,  which 
hopelessly  diverge  from  each  other,  while  one 
of  them,  by  arbitrary  erasion,  forces  the  pedi- 
gree into  three  mystic  sections  of  fourteen 
each;  a  clear  proof  that  it  was  not  taken 
from  any  public  record,  even  if  we  could 
suppose  it  possible  that  amid  all  the  convul- 
sions of  Judea  the  record  of  a  peasant's 
pedigree  had  been  preserved.  One  of  the 
genealogies,  moreover,  includes  the  mythical 
line  of  patriarchs  between  Adam  and  Abra- 
ham. The  Messiahship  of  Jesus  is  a  ques- 
tion with  which  we  need  practically  concern 
ourselves  no  more.  The  Messiah  was  a 
dream  of  the  tribal  pride  of  the  Jew,  to 
which,  as  to  other  creations  of  tribal  or 
national  pride  or  fancy,  we  may  bid  a  long 
farewell.  That  it  should  be  necessary  for 
the  redeemer  of  the  Jewish  race  to  trace  his 
pedigree  to  a  hero  so  dear  to  the  national 
heart,  though  morally  so  questionable,  as 
David,  was  natural  enough;  but  who  can 
believe  that  this  was  necessary  for  the  Re- 
deemer of  mankind?  It  is  rather  lamentable 
to  think  how  much  study  and  thought  have 


178      MIRACULOUS  ELEMENT  IN  CHRISTIANITY 

been  wasted  in  the  attempt  to  establish  the 
fulfilment  of  a  Hebrew  vision,  devoid  of 
importance  or  interest  for  the  rest  of  the 
human  race. 

What  was  the  relation  of  Christ  to  Juda- 
ism ?  His  culture  manifestly  was  Jewish ;  he 
accepted  the  sacred  books  of  the  nation, 
treating  the  book  of  Daniel  as  authentic  and 
the  story  of  Jonah  as  history;  he  taught  in 
the  synagogues;  he  fulfilled  all  righteousness 
by  his  observance  of  the  ceremonial  law.  He 
was  a  reformer  and  a  regenerator,  not  a  revo- 
lutionist. It  can  hardly  be  doubted  that  he 
was  of  pure  Jewish  race,  though  the  popula- 
tion of  Galilee  was  very  mixed  and  was,  on 
that  account,  despised  by  the  blue  blood  of 
Jerusalem,  while  the  fabrication  of  genealo- 
gies seems  rather  to  indicate  some  misgivings 
on  this  point.  Here,  again,  we  are  perplexed 
by  the  discrepancies  among  the  authorities, 
if  authorities  they  can  be  called.  In  some 
places  Christ  is  made  to  represent  himself  as 
being  sent  only  to  the  lost  sheep  of  the 
house  of  Israel ;  as  coming  not  to  destroy  the 
law,  but  to  fulfil  it  and  to  establish  every 


MIRACULOUS  ELEMENT  IN  CHRISTIANITY     179 

jot  and  tittle  of  it  for  ever;  as  regarding  all 
outside  the  pale  of  Judaism  in  the  light  of 
dogs,  worthy  only  to  eat  of  the  crumbs 
under  the  Judaic  table;  as  forbidding  his 
apostles  to  enter  any  city  of  the  Gentiles  or 
Samaritans.  Elsewhere  he  selects  a  Samaritan 
in  contrast  to  the  self-righteous  Jew  as  a 
type  of  charity,  praises  the  faith  of  a  hea- 
then soldier  as  greater  than  any  found  in 
Israel,  and  chooses  the  Samaritan  woman  as 
the  recipient  of  his  highest  and  most  memor- 
able utterance  concerning  the  nature  of  reli- 
gion, while  the  parables  of  the  prodigal 
son  and  the  labourers  in  the  vineyard  seem 
also  symbolically  to  suggest  the  conversion 
and  admission  of  the  Gentiles.  The  writer 
of  the  first  Gospel  evidently  draws  one  way; 
the  writer  of  the  fourth,  who  betrays  a  posi- 
tive antipathy  to  the  Jews,  the  other.  What 
is  certain  is  that  practically  Jesus  put  con- 
science above  the  law,  even  above  the  law  of 
the  Decalogue;  and  in  place  of  the  tribal 
and  half-local  religion  of  the  Jew  introduced 
the  religion  of  humanity.  For  this  Judaism 
rejected  him,  crucified  him,  and  itself,  sink- 


180      MIRACULOUS  ELEMENT  IN  CHRISTIANITY 

ing  deeper  than  ever  into  its  tribalism  and 
legalism,  remained  the  enemy  of  his  reli- 
gion and  of  his  brotherhood  of  man.  In  the 
Pauline  Epistles  we  see  Christianity  detach- 
ing itself  by  a  painful  effort  from  Judaism; 
and  we  willingly  believe  that  Paul  is  right 
in  holding  that  the  genuine  tradition  of 
Jesus  is  on  the  side  of  emancipation. 

Did  Jesus  regard  himself  or  allow  himself 
to  be  regarded  as  God?  Unitarians  quote 
strong  texts  to  the  contrary.  The  Trinita- 
rians get  their  texts  chiefly  from  the  fourth 
Gospel,  which  is  manifestly  imbued  with  the 
peculiar  views  of  its  writer  and  his  circle. 
In  fact,  it  may  be  said  to  be  one  note  of 
the  comparatively  late  composition  of  that 
Gospel,  that  time  must  have  elapsed  sufficient 
for  the  Teacher  of  Galilee  to  become,  first 
divine,  and  then  the  Second  Person  of  the 
Trinity  and  the  Alexandrian  Logos.  It 
seems  unlikely  that  even  in  those  days  of 
theosophic  reverie  the  author  of  the  sayings 
and  the  parables  should  ever  have  been  led 
by  spiritual  exaltation  or  by  the  adoring  love 
of  his  disciples  to  form  and  promulgate  such 


MIRACULOUS  ELEMENT  IN  CHRISTIANITY     181 

a  conception  of  himself.  At  any  rate,  we  have 
done  with  the  Alexandrian  Logos,  as  well  as 
with  the  paradoxes  of  the  Athanasian  Creed. 

We  have  done,  too,  for  ever  with  the  mixt- 
ure of  Rabbinism  and  Alexandrian  theoso- 
phy,  with  which  St.  Paul  has  been  accused 
of  overlaying  the  Christian  faith.  We  may 
bid  farewell  to  his  doctrine  of  the  Atone- 
ment. That  doctrine  is  bound  up  with  the 
belief  in  the  fall  of  Adam,  and  the  fall  of 
Adam  is  now  abandoned  as  a  fact  even  by 
orthodox  theologians,  though  they  would  fain 
substitute  for  it  some  lapse  of  the  human 
race  from  a  more  perfect  state,  without  any 
proof  either  of  the  more  perfect  state  or  of 
the  lapse.  As  was  said  before,  if  there  was 
no  Fall,  there  was  no  need  of  an  Atonement; 
if  no  need  of  an  Atonement,  there  was  no 
need  of  an  Incarnation ;  and  that  whole  cycle 
of  dogma  apparently  falls  to  the  ground. 

In  calling  himself  the  Son  of  Man  Jesus 
might  seem  to  identify  himself  with  a  mystic 
figure  in  Daniel;  but  the  Son  of  Man  is  not 
the  Son  of  God,  nor  is  it  the  Son  of  a  Jew; 
it  is  a  title  of  humanity. 


182     MIRACULOUS  ELEMENT  IN  CHRISTIANITY 

From  such  ethical  limitations  and  peculi- 
arities as  cling  to  the  characters  and  teach- 
ing of  philosophers  of  Athens  and  Roman 
Stoics,  the  character  and  teaching  of  Jesus 
are  essentially  free.  There  is  no  brand  of 
nationality  or  race  to  interfere  with  our 
acceptance  of  him  as  pattern  and  model  of 
humanity.  His  limitations  are  those  of  a 
peasant  of  Galilee  seeing  nothing  of  modern 
and  complex  civilization.  For  Jesus  politics 
had  no  existence;  at  least,  the  only  political 
relation  known  to  him  was  that  of  provincial 
subjection  to  the  military  empire  of  Rome, 
so  that  all  political  questions  were  perfectly 
solved  for  him  when  he  had  said,  "Render 
unto  Caesar  the  things  which  are  Caesar's, 
and  unto  God  the  things  which  are  God's." 
He  saw  little  of  commerce;  if  he  ever 
looked  on  Tyre  and  Sidon  it  was  from  afar; 
trade,  as  it  showed  itself  in  the  money- 
changers and  salesmen  of  the  temple,  was 
revolting  to  him;  from  the  magnificent 
buildings  of  the  capital  his  simplicity  seems 
to  have  recoiled.  Art  Judea  had  not,  but 
to  art  he  would  probably  have  been  in- 


MIRACULOUS  ELEMENT  IN  CHRISTIANITY     183 

different.  To  his  eye  the  lily  of  the  field 
was  more  beautiful  than  Solomon  in  all  his 
glory,  and  would  have  been  more  beautiful 
than  the  work  of  Phidias.  Wealth  ap- 
peared to  him  only  in  the  guise  of  Dives 
with  Lazarus  lying  at  his  gate,  not  in  its 
more  beneficent  form;  and  therefore  to  him 
wealth  seemed  in  itself  unblest  and  poverty 
in  itself  blest.  His  benign  influence  has 
been  mainly  over  the  individual  heart  and 
in  the  simple  relations  of  life.  Over  poli- 
tics, commerce,  the  great  world,  and  civiliza- 
tion generally  his  influence,  notwithstanding 
national  professions  and  state  churches,  has 
been  far  less.  The  pursuit  of  wealth  has 
been  eager  among  the  professed  disciples  of 
him  who  preached  the  Sermon  upon  the 
Mount,  and  in  the  temples  of  the  Prince 
of  Peace  have  been  hung  up  the  trophies  of 
war.  The  morality  of  civil,  commercial,  and 
social  life  has,  perhaps,  rather  suffered  by 
the  formal  profession  of  an  unattainable 
standard,  and  the  world  has  been  more  evil 
than  it  might  have  been  if  the  ideal  of  good 
men  had  not  been  withdrawal  from  an  evil 


184      MIRACULOUS  ELEMENT  IN  CHRISTIANITY 

world.  Among  the  teachings  of  Jesus  re- 
corded in  the  Gospels,  learning,  literature, 
and  science  have  no  place.  To  the  mind  of 
Jesus,  had  they  presented  themselves,  they 
would  probably  have  seemed  entirely  alien. 
The  simplicity  of  the  child  and  the  spiritual 
insight  of  poverty  were  in  his  eyes  superior 
to  the  wisdom  of  the  wise.  In  this  respect 
his  thoroughgoing  disciples  have  generally 
reflected  the  image  of  their  Master.  What 
would  St.  Francis  of  Assisi  have  made  of 
European  civilization?  Other  limitations  of 
Jesus  were  his  estrangement  from  domestic 
life  with  its  relations,  and  the  curtailment  of 
his  experience  by  an  early  death. 

To  one  of  low  estate  in  a  province 
oppressed  by  foreign  rule,  full  of  misery 
and  leprosy,  it  might  well  seem  that  this 
world  was  evil  and  the  only  chance  of  hap- 
piness for  man  was  by  escaping  from  it  to  a 
better.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  pes- 
simist has  a  right  to  say  that  the  Gospel  is 
with  him  so  far  as  the  present  world  is  con- 
cerned. 

Allowance  must  be  made  also  for  Oriental 


MIRACULOUS  ELEMENT  IN  CHRISTIANITY     185 

hyperbole.  Over-carefulness  poisons  life; 
but  if  we  literally  cared  not  for  the  things 
of  to-morrow,  we  and  our  families  should 
starve.  The  sparrows  do  not  look  to  Provi- 
dence to  feed  them;  they  search  for  food  the 
livelong  day  themselves.  Forgiveness  is  the 
general  principle  which  even  self-interest 
prescribes;  but  if  we  were  to  offer  the 
other  cheek  to  the  smiter,  the  other  cheek 
would  too  often  be  smitten;  and  if  we  were 
to  forgive  all  wrong-doers  until  seventy 
times  seven,  wrong  would  fill  the  world. 
To  the  brotherhood  of  men  there  is  a 
rational  limit.  In  our  relations  to  each 
other,  if  there  is  something  that  is  fraternal, 
there  is  something  that  is  not.  Competition 
and  antagonism  are  normal  facts.  The  prac- 
tical truth  lies  somewhere  between  the  view 
of  Hobbes  and  that  of  the  Gospel,  though 
with  a  recognition  of  the  Gospel  view  as  the 
ideal.  Justice,  with  her  scales  and  her 
sword,  will  keep  her  place  as  well  as  love 
or  the  enthusiasm  of  humanity.  If  the 
aggressor  tries  to  take  away  your  coat,  you 
will  have,  instead  of  giving  him  your  cloak 


186      MIRACULOUS  ELEMENT  IN  CHRISTIANITY 

also,  to  withstand  his  aggression  in  the  court 
of  law  or  by  force.  It  would  be  bad  for  him 
as  well  as  for  you  if  you  did  not. 

Of  the  intolerance,  persecutions,  and  reli- 
gious wars  which  have  resulted  from  dog- 
matism, on  the  other  hand,  the  true  Jesus  is 
blameless.  If  anything  like  narrowness  or 
intolerance  is  thrust  upon  him  by  a  dogmatic 
narrator,  his  own  character  and  the  general 
scope  of  his  teaching  repel  it.  His  genuine 
teaching  clearly  was  ethical  and  spiritual,  not 
dogmatic.  Nor  to  him  can  be  fairly  ascribed 
asceticism,  eremitism,  the  false  idea  of  saint- 
ship  as  seclusion  and  self-torture,  or  the 
hideous  array  of  hospital  pathos  embodying 
that  idea  which  fills  the  galleries  of  mediaeval 
art.  His  ministry  commences  at  a  marriage 
feast  and  his  enemies  reproach  him  with  not 
being  ascetic.  In  his  character  and  history 
there  is  no  doubt  a  large  element  of  sorrow, 
without  which  he  would  not  have  touched 
humanity.  Yet  we  think  too  much  of  Jeru- 
salem and  of  the  closing  scene  with  its  ago- 
nies, its  horrors,  and  the  circle  of  dark,  even 
of  dreadful,  dogma  which  has  been  formed 


MIRACULOUS  ELEMENT  IN  CHRISTIANITY     187 

around  it.  We  think  too  little  of  the  preach- 
ing of  the  Word  of  life,  and  of  the  land  in 
which  the  Word  of  life  was  preached.  Let 
us  sometimes  draw  a  veil  over  the  Cross, 
banish  from  our  imaginations  Jerusalem  and 
its  temple  reeking  with  bloody  sacrifice,  its 
fanatical  Judaism,  its  hypocritical  Pharisa- 
ism, its  throng  of  bigots  yelling  for  a  judi- 
cial murder.  Let  us  learn  to  see  the  great 
Teacher  of  humanity  in  the  happy  days  of 
his  mission,  while  he  gathers  round  him  the 
circle  of  loving  disciples  and  of  simple  hearts 
thirsting  for  the  waters  of  life,  in  the  vil- 
lage synagogue,  on  the  summer  hillside  or 
lake  shore,  amidst  the  vines  and  oleanders 
and  lilies  of  Galilee. 


MORALITY  AND   THEISM 


MORALITY  AND   THEISM 

MR.  LESLIE  STEPHEN,  at  the  conclusion  of 
his  Science  of  Ethics,  admits,  with  his  usual 
candour  and  courage,  that  one  great  difficulty 
remains  not  only  unsolved  but  insoluble. 
"There  is,"  he  says,  "no  absolute  coinci- 
dence between  virtue  and  happiness.  I  can- 
not prove  that  it  is  always  prudent  to  act 
rightly  or  that  it  is  always  happiest  to  be 
virtuous."  In  another  passage  he  avows  that 
in  accepting  the  altruist  theory  he  accepts, 
as  inseparable  from  it,  the  conclusion  that 
"the  path  of  duty  does  not  coincide  with  the 
path  of  happiness " ;  and  he  compares  the 
attempt  to  establish  an  absolute  coincidence 
to  an  attempt  to  square  the  circle  or  dis- 
cover perpetual  motion.  In  another  passage 
he  puts  the  same  thing  in  a  concrete  form. 
"The  virtuous  men,"  he  says,  "may  be  the 
191 


192  MORALITY  AND   THEISM 

very  salt  of  the  earth,  and  yet  the  discharge 
of  a  function  socially  necessary  may  involve 
their  own  misery."  "A  great  moral  and 
religious  teacher,"  he  adds,  "has  often  been 
a  martyr,  and  we  are  certainly  not  entitled 
to  assume  either  that  he  was  a  fool  for  his 
pains  or,  on  the  other  hand,  that  the  highest 
conceivable  degree  of  virtue  can  make  mar- 
tyrdom agreeable."  We  may  doubt,  in  his 
opinion,  whether  it  answers  to  be  a  moral 
hero.  "In  a  gross  society,  where  the  tem- 
perate man  is  an  object  of  ridicule  and  nec- 
essarily cut  off  from  participation  in  the 
ordinary  pleasures  of  life,  he  may  find  his 
moral  squeamishness  conducive  to  misery; 
the  just  and  honourable  man  is  made  miser- 
able in  a  corrupt  society  where  the  social 
combinations  are  simply  bands  of  thieves, 
and  his  high  spirit  only  awakens  hatred;  and 
the  benevolent  is  tortured  in  proportion  to 
the  strength  of  his  sympathies  in  a  society 
where  they  meet  with  no  return,  and  where 
he  has  to  witness  cruelty  triumphant  and 
mercy  ridiculed  as  weakness."  So  that  not 
only  are  men  exposed  to  misery  by  reason  of 


MORALITY  AND   THEISM  193 

their  superiority,  but  "every  reformer  who 
breaks  with  the  world,  though  for  the  world's 
good,  must  naturally  expect  much  pain  and 
must  be  often  tempted  to  think  that  peace 
and  harmony  are  worth  buying,  even  at  the 
price  of  condoning  evil."  "'Be  good  if  you 
would  be  happy '  seems  to  be  the  verdict 
even  of  worldly  prudence;  but  it  adds,  in  an 
emphatic  aside,  'Be  not  too  good.''  Of  a 
moral  hero  it  is  said,  that  "it  may  be  true 
both  that  a  less  honourable  man  would  have 
had  a  happier  life,  and  that  a  temporary  fall 
below  the  highest  strain  of  heroism  would 
have  secured  for  him  a  greater  chance  of 
happiness."  Had  he  given  way,  "he  might 
have  made  the  discovery  —  not  a  very  rare 
one  —  that  remorse  is  among  the  passions 
most  easily  lived  down."  Mr.  Stephen  fully 
recognizes  the  existence  of  men  "capable  of 
intense  pleasure  from  purely  sensual  gratifi- 
cation, and  incapable  of  really  enjoying  any 
of  the  pleasures  which  imply  public  spirit, 
or  private  affection,  or  vivid  imagination"; 
and  he  confesses  that  with  regard  to  such 
men  the  moralist  has  no  leverage  whatever. 


194  MORALITY  AND   THEISM 

The  physician  has  leverage;  so  has  the 
policeman;  but  it  is  possible,  as  Mr.  Stephen 
would  probably  admit,  to  indulge  not  only 
covetousness  but  lust  at  great  cost  to  others 
without  injury  to  your  own  health,  and  with- 
out falling  into  the  clutches  of  the  law. 

The  inference  from  Mr.  Stephen's  admission 
seems  to  be  that  duty  is  a  theistic  term.  The 
same  may  be  said  of  its  synonyms,  moral 
obligation  and  moral  law.  We  cannot  tell 
whether  they  are  binding  on  reason  unless 
we  know  whether  there  is  a  God  or  some 
superior  power  to  impose  the  law,  bestow  the 
reward,  and  enforce  the  penalty.  We  may 
extend  the  statement  to  perfect  happiness, 
which,  as  a  state  distinct  from  pleasure,  seems 
to  imply  a  guarantee  superior  to  the  accidents, 
and  a  duration  uncurtailed  by  the  brevity,  of 
mortal  life. 

With  every  man  his  own  interest  must  be 
paramount,  and  every  man's  interest  is  the 
fulfilment  of  his  strongest  desires.  As  a 
general  rule,  our  desires,  seeing  that  we  are 
domestic  and  social  as  well  as  individual, 
may  lead  us  to  promote  the  good  of  the 


MORALITY  AND   THEISM  195 

family  and  of  society.  But  this  is  not  in- 
variably the  case,  and  when  it  is  not  the 
case,  supposing  that  there  is  no  God  to  fix 
his  canon  against  evil-doing,  what  is  there 
to  withhold  a  man  from  gratifying  his  de- 
sires at  the  expense  of  society,  or  to  make 
his  gratification  criminal?  Napoleon  avowed 
that  he  deliberately  excluded  from  his  mind 
thoughts  about  any  world  but  this,  and  that 
had  he  not  done  so  he  could  not  have  achieved 
great  things.  Of  the  great  things  which  he 
did  achieve,  his  agnosticism  was  unquestionably 
a  condition.  But  of  the  great  things  which  the 
Antonines  and  other  Roman  Stoics  achieved, 
the  condition  was  not  less  unquestionably  the 
ascendancy  of  thoughts  which  Napoleon  ex- 
cluded. It  was  not  in  their  case  a  definite 
religious  belief,  but  it  was  a  belief  in  a  power 
of  righteousness  and  in  an  assured  reward  of 
virtue.  Observe,  too,  that  Napoleon  found  it 
necessary,  in  the  interest  of  political  and  social 
order,  to  restore  religion. 

"Virtue  is  the  doing  good  to  mankind  in 
obedience  to  the  will  of  God  and  for  the 
sake  of  everlasting  happiness."  So  says 


196  MORALITY  AND   THEISM 

Paley,  speaking  with  his  usual  directness. 
He  omits  to  note  those  social  and  domestic 
desires  and  necessities  of  our  nature  which, 
in  themselves,  move  us  to  do  good  to  man- 
kind as  well  for  the  pleasure  of  doing  good 
as  for  the  hope  that  good  will  be  done  to  us 
in  turn.  Yet  it  seems  impossible  to  doubt 
that  morality,  personal  and  social,  but  espe- 
cially social,  has  hitherto  largely  rested,  in 
ordinary  minds,  on  a  foundation  of  religious 
belief,  including  the  belief  in  another  life 
and  in  future  rewards  and  punishments. 
That  foundation  is  now  manifestly  giving 
way.  Literature  teems  with  the  proofs  of 
this.  So  does  the  conversation  of  the  edu- 
cated classes.  So  does  even  apologetic  the- 
ology, the  attitude  of  which  is  generally  one 
of  concession  and  retreat,  while  among  large 
bodies  of  quick-witted  mechanics,  even  in 
England,  still  more  in  France  and  other 
countries,  scepticism  is  undisguised  and 
blunt,  in  France  going  the  length  even  of 
a  comic  Life  of  Christ.  It  is  natural  to 
fear  that  unless  a  substitute  for  religion 
can,  within  a  measurable  time,  be  found,  a 


MORALITY  AND   THEISM  197 

period  of  some  moral  confusion  will  ensue. 
Philosophers,  of  course,  will  be  kept  right, 
not  only  by  their  philosophy,  but  by  the  char- 
acter which  dedication  to  philosophy  implies. 
Nobody  expects  that  they  will  fall  to  com- 
mitting murder  or  adultery;  although  the 
writer,  as  he  believes,  may  himself  say  that 
he  has  witnessed  the  case  of  a  highly  edu- 
cated mind  to  which  the  leap  from  theism 
to  agnosticism  proved  morally  fatal.  It  is  not 
likely  that  there  will  be  any  sudden  catas- 
trophe. Society  will  not  fall  to  pieces.  It 
will  be  held  together  by  the  necessity  of 
labour,  of  order,  of  mutual  help  and  forbear- 
ance, by  the  domestic  and  social  affections, 
by  opinion,  by  the  law  and  the  police.  It 
has,  in  fact,  been  held  together,  after  a  cer- 
tain fashion,  in  China  by  these  forces  with 
little  aid  from  religion.  But  it  does  not 
follow  that,  pending  the  reparation  of  the 
basis,  society  may  not  undergo  a  bad  quarter 
of  an  hour,  especially  if,  in  the  absence  of 
spiritual  aims  and  of  any  hopes  beyond  this 
world,  a  passionate  thirst  for  pleasure,  and 
for  the  means  of  obtaining  it,  should  prevail. 


198  MORALITY  AND   THEISM 

A  moral  interregnum  of  this  kind  there  actu- 
ally was  between  the  decline  of  mediaeval 
Catholicism  and  the  installation  of  Protes- 
tantism or  reformed  Catholicism  in  its  place. 
To  that  interregnum  belong  the  Borgias,  the 
Visconti,  Machiavel,  and  Catherine  de  Medi- 
cis.  The  chief  of  Christendom  glories  in  the 
massacre  of  St.  Bartholomew,  and  even  the 
court  of  England  thinks  so  lightly  of  it  as  to 
continue  negotiating  with  Catherine  de  Medici 
for  a  marriage  between  the  queen  of  England 
and  one  of  Catherine's  sons.  The  present 
vogue  of  ethical  heterodoxy  under  the  guise 
of  works  of  fiction,  among  other  things,  is 
surely  a  symptom  of  ethical  disintegration. 

Benjamin  Franklin,  describing  the  effects 
of  scepticism  on  himself  and  young  men  of 
his  time,  says  that  with  religion  morality 
gave  way  at  once,  even  to  common  honesty 
and  common  decency,  and  that  it  was  only 
after  much  reflection  that  he  began  to  sus- 
pect that  wrong  was  not  wrong  because  it 
was  forbidden,  but  that  it  was  forbidden  be- 
cause it  was  wrong.  It  is  true  this  was  in 
the  eighteenth  century,  and  the  same  effect 


MORALITY  AND   THEISM  199 

would  not  be  produced  on  a  Franklin  now. 
But  the  masses  are  not  Franklins.  They  are 
not  as  capable  of  reflection  now  as  Franklin 
was  in  his  time,  and  while  they  are  coming 
up  to  his  level  the  world  may  have  that  bad 
quarter  of  an  hour. 

Even  in  countries  where  there  is  no  state 
church,  society  is  still  largely  organized  in 
the  form  of  churches.  Philanthropy  works 
to  a  great  extent  through  the  churches,  and 
so,  in  some  measure,  does  education.  The 
social  shock  occasioned  by  the  departure  of 
religion  would,  therefore,  in  itself  be  severe. 
It  is  probably  the  apprehension  of  this  and 
of  the  social  and  political  consequences  of 
atheism,  not  less  than  the  influence  of  habit 
on  fashion,  that  leads  some,  who  themselves 
believe  no  longer,  to  support  the  church. 
Even  pronounced  Positivists  have  been  known 
to  give  money  for  this  purpose.  There  is  no 
saying,  indeed,  how  much  of  the  apparent 
church-going  and  contribution  to  church  offer- 
tories may  be  merely  politic,  or  how  hollow 
the  crust  of  profession  may  be.  But  taking 
the  lowest  reasonable  estimate  of  religious 


200  MORALITY  AND   THEISM 

influence,  what  a  void  would  the  departure 
of  religion  and  the  closing  of  the  churches 
leave  in  life! 

Again,  what  is  to  become  of  the  clergy? 
Here  is  a  great  body  of  the  very  flower  of  our 
morality,  as  well  as  of  our  culture,  committed 
to  a  calling  the  existence  of  which  is  bound 
up,  so  far  as  we  can  see,  certainly  with 
theism,  if  not  with  supernatural  religion. 
Supposing  religion  to  fail,  what  would  the 
clergy  do  ?  Would  they  transform  themselves 
into  teachers  of  ethics  and  social  guides? 
Would  they  starve?  Would  some  of  them 
be  drawn  into  revolution  and  thus  add  to  the 
seething  elements  of  disturbance?  A  celibate 
priest  is  well  prepared  for  adventure,  and  he 
may  hope,  however  vainly,  by  throwing  him- 
self into  a  social  revolution  to  found  his 
authority  anew.  Clergymen  read  and  think. 
Must  not  the  mental  state  of  some  of  them 
already  be  uneasy?  Is  not  Ritualism  itself 
in  some  cases  the  veil  of  doubt? 

We  talk  of  the  moral  law,  and  repeat  the 
famous  saying  of  Kant  that  the  two  things 
the  contemplation  of  which  filled  his  soul 


MORALITY  AND   THEISM  201 

with  awe,  were  the  moral  law  and  the  starry 
heavens.  This  implies  that  the  moral  law  is 
one,  and  that,  with  the  order  of  the  heavens, 
it  is  upheld  by  a  power  above  us.  What 
power  is  there  above  us  if  there  is  no  God 
or  we  have  no  proof  of  his  existence  ?  What 
is  the  moral  law?  There  are  certain  rules 
of  conduct  which  we  must  observe  in  order 
to  maintain  our  health,  bodily  and  mental,  to 
keep  our  affections  pure  and  warm,  and  to 
enable  us  to  earn  our  bread.  There  are  other 
rules  which  we  must  observe  in  order  to 
secure  our  domestic  happiness.  There  are 
also  rules  which  we  must  observe  in  order 
to  secure  our  welfare  as  members  of  society, 
of  the  commonwealth,  of  the  race.  These 
rules  play  into  each  other,  the  preservation 
of  our  health,  for  example,  being  essential  to 
our  right  temper  and  effective  action  in  all 
the  fields;  but  they  are  apparently  no  more 
one  or  capable  of  being  represented  as  a  self- 
existing  authority  transcending  all  individual 
interests,  than  our  care  for  our  own  comfort 
in  travelling  is  capable  of  being  represented 
as  one  with  our  necessary  respect  for  the 


202  MORALITY  AND   THEISM 

comfort  of  our  fellow-travellers.  The  rudi- 
ments of  morality  have  been  shown  to  exist 
in  animals,  which  are  as  little  conscious  of 
Kant's  moral  law  as  they  are  of  the  grandeur 
which  fills  his  soul  with  awe  when  he  gazes 
on  the  starry  heavens. 

Evolution  clearly  is  not  moral.  There  is 
nothing  moral  in  the  struggle  for  existence 
or  in  natural  selection.  This  bold  evolution- 
ists, such  as  Haeckel,  frankly  admit.  An 
organism  does  not  regulate  its  own  stage  of 
evolution,  nor  does  it  select  itself  or  endow 
itself  with  the  strength  which  will  enable  it 
to  triumph  in  the  struggle  for  existence.  It 
is  not  answerable  for  its  own  propensities, 
which  may  be  those  of  a  philanthropist  or 
those  of  an  assassin;  of  a  human  being  or  of 
a  tiger.  If  it  survives  in  the  struggle  for 
existence  its  survival  must  be  that  of  the 
fittest,  and  therefore  its  sufficient  justifica- 
tion. The  ultimate  tendency  of  things  may 
be  against  it,  as  it  is  against  the  propensi- 
ties of  tigers,  those  of  the  human  tiger  per- 
haps, as  well  as  those  of  the  tiger  of  the 
jungle.  But  this  does  not  make  it  the  duty 


MORALITY  AND   THEISM  203 

of  the  offensive  organism  to  cooperate  in  its 
own  elimination  or  to  refrain  from  gratifying 
its  natural  propensities  while  it  exists. 

So  far  as  social  morality  depends  on  the 
sanctity  of  human  life  or  of  humanity  gener- 
ally, it  can  hardly  fail  to  be  somewhat  threat- 
ened by  evolution,  which  levels  men  in  point 
of  origin,  and,  as  some  have  begun  to  be- 
lieve, in  point  of  destiny  with  other  animals. 
A  German  physiologist  of  the  extreme  evo- 
lutionary school  said  to  Agassiz  that  the 
kingdom  of  science  would  have  really  come 
when  you  could  go  out  and  shoot  a  man  for 
the  purpose  of  dissection.  "Of  course," 
replied  Agassiz,  "you  will  take  a  fine  speci- 
men, a  Goethe  or  a  Von  Humboldt."  We 
have  still,  no  doubt,  the  same  tribal  interest 
in  safeguarding  our  own  species,  and  this 
will  lead  us  to  hang  the  murderer  when  we 
catch  him.  But  the  murderer  who  by  his 
cunning  escapes  the  gallows,  and  perhaps 
comes  into  the  enjoyment  of  wealth  out  of 
which  the  life  which  he  has  taken  would 
have  kept  him,  —  why  should  he  feel  any 
more  remorse  than  he  would  have  felt  if  he 


204  MORALITY  AND   THEISM 

had  taken  the  life  of  a  dog?  Let  us  sup- 
pose, for  instance,  that  the  life  of  a  child 
stands  between  a  needy  man  and  a  great 
estate;  that  he  puts  an  end  to  the  child's 
life  in  such  a  way  as  to  escape  detection, 
enters  into  the  estate,  lives  a  life  of  ease 
and  affluence  instead  of  struggling  for  bread, 
spends  his  money  well  and  enjoys  the  good- 
will of  the  people  among  whom  he  lives; 
why  is  he  to  feel  remorse,  or,  if  he  has  a 
twinge  of  it,  why  is  he  not  to  repress  it  as 
he  would  any  other  unpleasant  emotion  or 
bodily  pain? 

We  speak  of  the  brotherhood  of  man  as 
our  great  security  for  mutual  benevolence 
and  our  high  inducement  to  virtuous  effort. 
But  is  it  an  absolute  certainty  that  men  are 
brothers?  Has  science  pronounced  decisively 
in  favour  of  the  unity  of  the  race?  Some 
men  of  science  certainly  have  pronounced  on 
the  other  side.  Again,  does  not  brotherhood 
imply  a  common  paternity,  and  where  is  the 
common  paternity  unless  we  have  all  a  father 
in  God?  If  that  idea  is  set  aside,  are  we 
not  as  much  competitors  as  brothers? 


MORALITY  AND   THEISM  205 

If  we  make  of  pleasure  our  ethical  criterion, 
how  are  we  to  distinguish  between  one  kind 
of  pleasure  and  another,  between  the  pleasure 
of  eating  the  bread  which  is  honestly  earned 
and  the  pleasure  of  eating  the  bread  which 
is  stolen?  Those  who  select  as  an  instance 
of  ethical  perfection  the  reciprocal  pleasure 
enjoyed  by  a  mother  and  the  child  at  her 
breast,  must  exclude  from  their  idea  of  per- 
fection anything  that  we  should  commonly 
call  moral,  since  there  is  nothing  in  the 
suckling  of  a  human  infant  more  moral  than 
in  the  suckling  of  a  calf. 

Perfect  adaptation,  again,  would  appear 
to  fail  as  an  ethical  criterion  or  sanction. 
Adaptation  may  be,  and  often  is,  as  perfect 
in  the  case  of  means  adopted  to  do  ill  deeds 
as  in  the  case  of  means  adopted  to  do  good 
deeds.  Punctuality,  which  is  selected  as  an 
instance  of  adaptation,  and  on  that  account 
moral,  is  shown  as  much  in  keeping  a  crimi- 
nal assignation  as  in  keeping  an  appoint- 
ment for  the  best  of  objects. 

The  satisfaction  of  cooperating  with  the 
motive  power  of  evolution  is  tendered  as  an 


206  MORALITY  AND   THEISM 

ethical  inducement.  It  would  hardly  present 
itself  so  to  beings  the  elimination  of  whom 
is  a  part  of  the  process.  Why  should  a 
mortal  sacrifice  his  enjoyments  to  the  ten- 
dencies, blind  tendencies  as  far  as  we 
know,  of  a  soulless  power  or  of  a  power 
which  to  us  manifests  no  soul?  If  the  pro- 
cess is,  as  an  evolutionary  philosopher  repre- 
sents it,  one  of  alternating  creation  and 
destruction,  Prometheus  might  find  satisfac- 
tion rather  in  stopping  the  process  at  the 
recommencement  of  its  destructive  part  than 
in  devout  cooperation. 

The  authors  of  systems  of  moral  philosophy 
have  sought  to  discover  some  intellectual 
principle  from  which  all  moral  rules  could 
be  logically  deduced  and  the  apprehension  of 
which  would  constrain  all  men  to  be  moral. 
But  the  question  remains,  why  men  who  do 
not  like  to  be  moral,  as  many  men  do  not, 
are  to  sacrifice  their  propensities  to  a  logi- 
cal deduction  from  an  intellectual  principle. 
Suppose  virtue  to  correspond,  as  Clarke  says, 
to  the  fitness  of  things,  why  is  Borgia  to 
prefer  the  fitness  of  things  to  the  enjoyment 


MORALITY  AND   THEISM  207 

of  his  orgies  and  to  the  criminal  courses  by 
which  the  means  of  that  enjoyment  are  to  be 
obtained?  What  is  needed  to  influence  the 
actions  of  men  is  not  an  abstract  principle 
or  a  definition,  but  a  motive.  It  is  by 
renewing  and  reinforcing  the  motive  power, 
not  by  defining  morality,  that  the  great  moral 
reforms  and  movements  have  been  made. 
Desire  of  health,  of  domestic  happiness,  of 
the  esteem  and  good-will  of  our  fellows,  of 
the  security  for  our  lives  and  property  which 
we  must  purchase  by  reciprocal  respect  for 
the  lives  and  property  of  others,  and  by 
obedience  to  the  laws,  are  motive  powers. 
The  necessity  of  obeying  the  will  of  God, 
with  eternal  reward  or  punishment  annexed, 
on  which  Paley  founds  the  inducement  to 
virtue,  provided  the  truth  of  theism  can  be 
proved,  is  a  motive  power  of  the  most  over- 
whelming kind.  Intellectual  perception  of  the 
fitness  of  things  is  not. 

Systems  of  ethics  founded  on  the  moral  taste 
fail  in  the  same  way.  They  cannot  show  any 
obligation  to  have  the  taste,  or,  in  its  absence,  to 
conform  to  the  peculiarity  of  those  who  have  it. 


208  MORALITY  AND   THEISM 

Butler's  ethics  are  founded  on  the  system 
of  man's  inward  frame  and  the  supremacy 
of  conscience,  which  he  takes  to  be  manifest, 
in  that  system.  "Appetites,  passions,  affec- 
tions, and  the  principle  of  reflection,"  he 
says,  "considered  merely  as  the  several  parts 
of  our  inward  nature,  do  not  at  all  give  us 
an  idea  of  the  system  or  constitution  of  this 
nature;  because  the  constitution  is  formed 
by  a  somewhat  not  yet  taken  into  considera- 
tion, namely,  by  the  relations  which  these 
several  parts  have  to  each  other,  the  chief 
of  which  is  the  authority  of  reflection  or 
conscience."  Conscience,  he  says,  if  it  had 
power  as  it  has  authority,  would  rule  the 
world.  Whence,  then,  its  lack  of  power? 
Butler  manifestly  assumes  that  man's  inward 
frame  is  regulated  by  divine  ordinance,  and 
that  conscience  is  the  voice  of  God.  Unless 
it  be  the  voice  of  God,  it  is  nothing  more 
than  an  index,  formed  by  experience  and 
ratified  by  tradition,  to  the  course  of  indi- 
vidual action  which  is  best  for  the  commu- 
nity and  the  race.  If  a  man  cares  nothing  for 
the  community  or  the  race,  with  him  con- 


.      MORALITY  AND   THEISM  209 

science  can  have  no  authority.  Such  a  man 
will  have  nothing  within  him  to  restrain 
him  from  sacrificing  the  happiness  and  lives 
of  other  men  without  measure  to  the  pro- 
motion of  his  own  interest  or  the  gratification 
of  his  passions.  His  only  restraints,  and  the 
only  restraints  of  thoroughly  selfish  men  in 
general,  will  be  social  influence  and,  in  the 
last  resort,  the  penal  law.  Social  influence 
will  be  strong  in  proportion  as  society  is 
well  compacted  and  as  the  man  is  by  nature 
sensitive  to  opinion  and  to  the  advantages 
of  kindly  relations  with  his  fellows.  Beyond 
this  there  remains,  to  control  the  wicked, 
nothing  but  the  penal  law,  and  the  penal 
law  may  be  evaded;  cupidity  and  passion 
will,  at  least,  often  hope  to  evade  it;  while 
a  man  of  Napoleon's  genius  and  fortunes 
may  raise  himself  entirely  above  it,  as  well 
as  above  the  pressure  of  opinion,  and  run, 
without  fear  of  punishment,  a  career  of 
slaughter  and  robbery  on  the  most  gigantic 
scale.  If  he  ever  feels  a  twinge  of  remorse, 
arising  from  early  lessons  or  the  force  of 
habit,  there  seems  to  be  no  assignable  reason 


210  MORALITY  AND   THEISM 

why  he  should  not  stifle  it  just  as  he  would 
assuage  any  bodily  ache  or  pain. 

In  such  action  as  is  heroic,  or  involves  great 
sacrifice  of  self,  especially,  there  appears  to 
be  an  element  hardly  separable  from  theism, 
whatever  allowance  we  may  make  for  the 
warmth  of  social  feeling  and  what  has  been 
called  the  enthusiasm  of  humanity.  Any- 
thing short  of  life  perhaps  we  can  imagine  a 
man  would  sacrifice  from  his  love  of  his  fel- 
lows and  in  the  hope  of  winning  their  love; 
but  the  sacrifice  of  life  seems  to  imply  the  ex- 
istence of  a  hope  beyond.  One  philosopher 
has  even  found  theism  in  the  devotion  of  the 
private  soldier  who  is  content,  with  almost 
as  little  expectation  of  individual  glory  as 
of  profit,  to  give  his  life  to  the  common 
cause. 

A  great  evolutionist  deduced  from  evo- 
lution the  negation  of  free  will  and  the 
automatism  of  man.  The  discovery  would 
have  been  an  end  of  anything  that  could 
properly  be  called  morality.  The  deduction, 
however,  supposing  it  logical,  would  be  fatal 
surely,  not  to  free  will,  but  to  evolution. 


MORALITY  AND   THEISM  211 

That  man  has  power  over  his  own  actions, 
however  limited  or  qualified  that  power  may 
be,  and  by  whatever  name  you  may  choose  to 
call  it,  with  the  responsibility  attendant,  is 
surely  a  fact  of  human  nature  no  less  unde- 
niable than  the  existence  of  any  one  of  our 
bodily  senses.  We  may  puzzle  ourselves  over 
it  without  end,  but  no  one  ever  practically 
denies  it  either  in  his  reflections  on  his  own 
actions  or  in  forming  his  opinion  on  the 
actions  of  his  neighbours.  The  whole  course 
of  life,  of  society,  of  law,  and  of  government, 
implies  it.  Its  presence  has  hitherto  repelled 
the  attempt  to  construct  a  science  of  history 
analogous  to  the  physical  sciences.  If  any- 
body has  ever  persuaded  himself,  nobody  has 
ever  acted  on  the  persuasion,  that  the  relation 
of  the  inducement  to  the  action,  in  him  or 
in  his  neighbours,  is  as  the  impact  of  one 
billiard  ball  on  the  other.  The  feeling  of 
free  will,  indeed,  may  be  roughly  described 
as  our  sense,  given  us  by  consciousness,  of 
the  difference  between  physical  and  moral 
causation. 

Mr.     Cotter    Morison,    a    man    himself    of 


212  MORALITY  AND   THEISM 

moral  sensibility  as  well  as  the  highest 
cultivation,  said  that  the  sooner  the  idea  of 
moral  responsibility  was  got  rid  of  the  better 
it  would  be  for  society  and  moral  education, 
and  that  while  virtue  might,  and  possibly 
would,  bring  happiness  to  the  virtuous 
man,  to  the  immoral  and  the  selfish  virtue 
would  probably  be  the  most  distasteful  or 
even  painful  thing  in  their  experience,  while 
vice  would  give  them  unmitigated  pleasure.1 
His  method  of  moral  reform  is  the  elimina- 
tion or  suppression  of  the  bad.  But  if  the 
bad  happen  to  be  the  stronger  or  the  more 
cunning,  what  is  to  prevent  their  eliminating 
or  suppressing  the  good?  What  is  to  prevent 
their  doing  this,  not  only  with  a  clear  con- 
science, but  with  a  glow  of  self -approbation  ? 
The  author  of  Modern  Thinkers,  bravely 
pushing  agnostic  principles  to  their  extreme 
conclusion,  says:  — 

"  It  is  generally  believed  to  be  moral  to  tell  the  truth, 
and  immoral  to  lie.  And  yet  it  would  be  difficult  to 
prove  that  nature  prefers  the  true  to  the  false.  Every- 

1  See  The  Service  of  .Man,  by  James  Cotter  Morison,  pp. 
293-314. 


MORALITY  AND   THEISM  213 

where  she  makes  the  false  impression  first,  and  only 
after  years,  or  thousands  of  years,  do  we  become  able 
to  detect  her  in  her  lies.  .  .  .  Nature  endows  almost 
every  animal  with  the  faculty  of  deceit  in  order  to  aid 
it  in  escaping  from  the  brute  force  of  its  superiors.  Why, 
then,  should  not  man  be  endowed  with  the  faculty  of 
lying  when  it  is  to  his  interest  to  appear  wise  concern- 
ing matters  of  which  he  is  ignorant?  Lying  is  often  a 
refuge  to  the  weak,  a  stepping-stone  to  power,  a  ground 
of  reverence  toward  those  who  live  by  getting  credit  for 
knowing  what  they  do  not  know.  No  one  doubts  that  it 
is  right  for  the  maternal  partridge  to  feign  lameness,  a 
broken  wing  or  leg,  in  order  to  conceal  her  young  in 
flight,  by  causing  the  pursuer  to  suppose  he  can  more 
easily  catch  her  than  her  offspring.  From  whence,  then, 
in  nature,  do  we  derive  the  fact  that  a  human  being  may 
not  properly  tell  an  untruth  with  the  same  motive?  Our 
early  histories,  sciences,  poetries,  and  theologies  are  all 
false,  yet  they  comprehend  by  far  the  major  part  of 
human  thought.  Priesthoods  have  ruled  the  world  by 
deceiving  our  tender  souls,  and  yet  they  command  our 
most  enduring  reverence.  Where,  then,  do  we  discover 
that  any  law  of  universal  nature  prefers  truth  to  false- 
hood, any  more  than  oxygen  to  nitrogen,  or  alkalies  to 
salts?  So  habituated  have  we  become  to  assume  that 
truth-telling  is  a  virtue,  that  nothing  is  more  difficult 
then  to  tell  how  we  came  to  assume  it,  nor  is  it  easy  of 
proof  that  it  is  a  virtue  in  an  unrestricted  sense.  What 
would  be  thought  of  the  military  strategist  who  made 
no  feints,  of  the  advertisement  that  contained  no  lie,  of 
the  business  man  whose  polite  suavity  covered  no  false- 
hood ? 


214  MORALITY  AND   THEISM 

"  Inasmuch  as  all  moral  rules  are  in  the  first  instance 
impressed  by  the  strong,  the  dominant,  the  matured,  and 
the  successful  upon  the  weak,  the  crouching,  the  infantile, 
and  the  servile,  it  would  not  be  strange  if  a  close  analysis 
and  a  minute  historical  research  should  concur  in  prov- 
ing that  all  moral  rules  are  doctrines  established  by  the 
strong  for  the  government  of  the  weak.  It  is  invariably 
the  strong  who  require  the  weak  to  tell  the  truth,  and 
always  to  promote  some  interest  of  the  strong.  .  .  . 

" '  Thou  shalt  not  steal '  is  a  moral  precept  invented 
by  the  strong,  the  matured,  the  successful,  and  by  them 
impressed  upon  the  weak,  the  infantile,  and  the  failures 
in  life's  struggle,  as  all  criminals  are.  For  nowhere  in 
the  world  has  the  sign  ever  been  blazoned  on  the  shop 
doors  of  a  successful  business  man,  '  Closed  because  the 
proprietor  prefers  crime  to  industry.'  Universal  society 
might  be  pictured,  for  the  illustration  of  this  feature  of 
the  moral  code,  as  consisting  of  two  sets  of  swine,  one  of 
which  is  in  the  clover,  and  the  other  is  out.  The  swine 
that  are  in  the  clover  grunt,  '  Thou  shalt  not  steal ;  put 
up  the  bars.'  The  swine  that  are  out  of  the  clover  grunt, 
'Did  you  make  the  clover?  let  down  the  bars.'  'Thou 
shalt  not  steal'  is  a  maxim  impressed  by  property  holders 
upon  non-property  holders.  It  is  not  only  conceivable, 
but  it  is  absolute  verity,  that  a  sufficient  deprivation  of 
property,  and  force,  and  delicacy  of  temptation,  would 
compel  every  one  \vho  utters  it  to  steal,  if  he  could  get 
an  opportunity.  In  a  philosophic  sense,  therefore,  it  is 
not  a  universal,  but  a  class,  law;  its  prevalence  and 
obedience  indicate  that  the  property  holders  rule  society, 
which  is  itself  an  index  of  advance  toward  civilization. 
No  one  would  say  that  if  a  lion  lay  gorged  with  his  ex- 


MORALITY  AND   THEISM  215 

cessive  feast  amidst  the  scattered  carcass  of  a  deer,  and  a 
jaguar  or  a  hyena  stealthily  bore  away  a  haunch  thereof, 
the  act  of  the  hyena  was  less  virtuous  than  that  of  the 
lion.  How  does  the  case  of  two  bushmen,  between  whom 
the  same  incident  occurs,  differ  from  that  of  the  two 
quadrupeds?  Each  is  doing  that  which  tends  in  the 
highest  degree  to  his  own  preservation,  and  it  may  be 
assumed  that  the  party  against  whom  the  spoliation  is 
committed  is  not  injured  at  all  by  it.  Among  many 
savage  tribes  theft  is  taught  as  a  virtue,  and  detection 
is  punished  as  a  crime.  .  .  .  Having  control  of  the 
forces  of  society,  the  strong  can  always  legislate,  or 
order,  or  wheedle,  or  preach,  or  assume  other  people's 
money  and  land  out  of  their  possession  into  their  own, 
by  methods  which  are  not  known  as  stealing,  since  in- 
stead of  violating  the  law  they  inspire  and  create  the  law. 
But  if  the  under  dog  in  the  social  fight  runs  away  with  a 
bone  in  violation  of  superior  force,  the  top  dog  runs  after 
him  bellowing,  '  Thou  shalt  not  steal,'  and  all  the  other 
top  dogs  unite  in  bellowing,  '  This  is  divine  law  and  not 
dog  law ' ;  the  verdict  of  the  top  dog,  so  far  as  law,  re- 
ligion, and  other  forms  of  brute  force  are  concerned, 
settles  the  question.  But  philosophy  will  see  in  this 
contest  of  antagonistic  forces,  a  mere  play  of  opposing 
elements,  in  which  larceny  is  an  incident  of  social  weak- 
ness and  unfitness  to  survive,  just  as  debility  and  leprosy 
are;  and  would  as  soon  assume  a  divine  command, 
'  Thou  shalt  not  break  out  in  boils  and  sores,'  to  the 
weakling  or  leper,  as  one  of  'Thou  shalt  not  steal'  to 
the  failing  struggler  for  subsistence.  So  far  as  the  irre- 
sistible promptings  of  nature  may  be  said  to  constitute  a 
divine  Jaw,  there  are  really  two  laws.  The  law  to  him, 


216  MORALITY  AND  THEISM 

who  will  be  injured  by  stealing  is,  '  Thou  shalt  not  steal,' 
meaning  thereby,  '  Thou  shalt  not  suffer  another  to  steal 
from  you.'  The  law  to  him  who  cannot  survive  without 
stealing  is  simply, '  Thou  shalt,  in  stealing,  avoid  being 
detected.' 

"So  the  laws  forbidding  unchastity  were  framed  by 
those  who,  in  the  earlier  periods  of  civilization,  could 
afford  to  own  women,  for  the  protection  of  their  property 
rights  in  them,  against  the  poor  who  could  not.  .  .  . 
We  do  not  mean,  by  this  course  of  reasoning,  to  imply 
that  the  strong  in  society  can,  or  ought  to  be,  governed 
by  the  weak :  that  is  neither  possible,  nor,  if  possible, 
would  it  be  any  improvement.  We  only  assert  that 
moral  precepts  are  largely  the  selfish  maxims  expressive 
of  the  will  of  the  ruling  forces  in  society,  those  who  have 
health,  wealth,  knowledge,  and  power,  and  are  designed 
wholly  for  their  own  protection  and  the  maintenance  of 
their  power.  They  represent  the  view  of  the  winning 
side,  in  the  struggle  for  subsistence,  while  the  true  in- 
terior law  of  nature  would  represent  a  varying  combat  in 
which  two  laws  would  appear,  viz. :  that  known  as  the 
moral  or  majority  law,  and  that  known  as  the  immoral  or 
minority  law,  which  commands  a  violation  of  the  other." l 

Happily,  the  strong  and  the  weak  are  not 
two  distinct  sets  of  men.  They  are  blended 
together  in  society,  by  the  common  interests 
and  general  opinion  of  which  the  strong  in 
the  exercise  of  their  strength  are  practically 

1  Modern  Thinkers,  by  Van  Buren  Denslow,  pp.  240-246. 


MORALITY  AND   THEISM  217 

controlled.  Men  who  are  strong  in  one  way 
are  very  often  weak  in  others ;  men  who  are 
weak  in  one  way  are  strong  in  others  ;  and 
there  are  innumerable  gradations  of  every  kind 
of  strength. 

This,  however,  is  free  thought  expressed 
with  a  vigour  and  frankness  for  which  in- 
quirers after  truth  will  be  thankful.  It  is 
curious,  as  an  indication  of  the  tendencies  of 
the  philosophy  to  which  it  relates,  and  as  a  re- 
ply to  the  historical  scepticism  which  refuses 
to  believe  that  the  teaching  of  the  Sophists 
really  was  what  it  is  represented  to  have 
been  by  Socrates  or  Plato.  It  would  also 
seem  to  be  a  conclusive  answer  to  those 
who  utterly  deride  the  apprehension  of  a 
moral  interregnum,  and  feel  confident  that 
society  is  going  to  sail,  without  interruption 
or  disturbance  of  its  rule  of  conduct,  out  of 
the  zone  of  theistic  into  that  of  scientific 
morality.  It  suggests  that  between  one  state 
and  the  other  there  may  be  an  interval  in 
which  the  question  will  be  not  so  much  be- 
tween the  moral  and  the  immoral,  as  between 
the  "top  and  the  under  dog." 


218  MORALITY  AND   THEISM 

The  Marquis  of  Steyne  is  an  organism, 
and,  like  all  other  organisms,  so  long  as  he 
succeeds  in  maintaining  himself  against  com- 
peting organisms,  is  able  to  make  good  his 
title  to  existence  under  the  law  of  natural 
selection.  He  has  his  pleasures;  they  are 
not  those  of  a  St.  Paul,  or  a  Shakespeare,  or 
a  Wilberforce,  but  they  are  his.  They  make 
him  happy,  according  to  the  only  measure  of 
happiness  which  he  can  conceive;  and  if  he 
is  cautious,  as  a  sagacious  voluptuary  will 
be,  they  need  not  diminish  his  vitality,  they 
may  even  increase  it  both  in  duration  and 
intensity,  though  they  may  play  havoc  with 
the  welfare  of  a  number  of  victims  and 
dependants.  He  may  successively  seduce  a 
score  of  women  without  bad  consequences  to 
himself.  Why  is  he  doing  wrong?  In  the 
name  of  what  do  you  peremptorily  summon 
him  to  return  to  the  path  of  virtue?  In  the 
name  of  altruistic  pleasure?  He  happens  to 
be  one  of  those  organisms  which  are  not 
capable  of  it.  In  the  name  of  a  state  of 
society  which  is  to  come  into  existence  long 
after  he  has  mouldered  to  dust  in  the  family 


MORALITY  AND   THEISM  219 

mausoleum  of  the  Gaunts  ?  His  reply  will  be 
that  as  a  sensible  man  he  lives  for  the  present, 
not  for  a  future  in  which  he  will  have  no 
share.  Suppose  you  could  induce  him  to  try 
a  course  of  virtue,  or  of  altruism  if  the  term 
is  more  scientific,  what  in  his  case  would  be 
the  practical  result?  Would  it  not  be  a 
painful  conflict  between  passion  and  con- 
science, or  perhaps,  in  the  terms  of  the 
now  current  philosophy,  between  presented 
sensations  on  the  one  hand,  and  represented 
or  re-represented  sensations  on  the  other? 
Is  it  not  probable  that  he  would  end  his 
days  before  that  conflict  had  been  brought 
to  a  close?  Its  fruits,  however  imperfect, 
would,  of  course,  be  both  happy  arid  precious 
in  the  estimation  of  theism;  but  in  the  esti- 
mation of  any  ethical  philosophy  founded  on 
pleasure  and  pain,  what  could  they  be  but 
pleasure,  unquestionable  pleasure,  lost,  and 
pain,  pain  of  a  distressing  kind,  incurred? 
So  with  other  organisms,  which,  as  thorough- 
going evolutionism  would  lead  us  to  think, 
are  pursuing  their  congenial,  though  conven- 
tionally reprobated,  walks  of  life.  The  assas- 


220  MORALITY  AND   THEISM 

sin,  the  robber,  and  the  sharper  have  their 
status  in  nature,  as  well  as  any  other  members 
of  the  predatory  tribes.  It  is  laid  down  that 
the  life  and  interest  of  the  social  organism 
must  rank  above  the  lives  and  interests  of  its 
component  particles,  the  individual  men,  and 
form  the  measure  of  their  desires  and  actions. 
This,  however,  would  seem  to  be  an  arbitrary 
assumption,  and  one  on  which  morality  can- 
not be  firmly  founded.  Can  the  term  "organ- 
ism" itself  be  applied  to  society  otherwise 
than  in  a  metaphorical  or  imperfect  sense?  Of 
the  particles  of  which  society  consists,  each, 
unlike  the  particles  of  a  true  organism,  has  a 
consciousness  and  a  unit  of  its  own.  Further 
enforcement  at  least  is  needed. 

Apprehension  of  a  temporary  disturbance 
of  social  order,  however,  or  even  of  an 
ethical  interregnum,  is  not  our  highest  motive 
for  desiring  to  know  whether  the  universe 
is  guided  by  a  Providence  or  borne  blindly 
on  by  a  material  evolution,  and  whether 
there  is  or  is  not  a  supreme  power  on  the 
side  of  virtue.  No  question  surely  can  be 
more  practical  than  these,  unless  we  are  con- 


MORALITY  AND   THEISM  221 

tent  to  be  as  the  beasts  that  perish;  a  fate 
to  which  probably  few  are  deliberately  re- 
signed, however,  amidst  the  business  or  the 
enjoyments  of  life  we  may  put  aside  the 
thought  of  our  mortality. 

In  what  position  then,  since  the  discovery 
of  evolution  or,  as  we  should  rather  say,  to 
avoid  building  too  much  on  a  particular 
theory,  since  the  recent  revelations  of  sci- 
ence, is  the  theistic  hypothesis  left? 

Clearly,  there  is  an  end  of  our  faith,  so  far 
as  cosmogony  is  concerned,  in  the  sacred 
books  of  the  Hebrews,  from  which  our  no- 
tions of  creation  and  the  Creator  have 
hitherto  been  largely  derived.  Those  books 
must  now  be  placed  on  the  same  shelf  with 
the  sacred  books  of  other  races.  They  are 
superior  to  their  fellows  no  doubt,  not  only 
in  loftiness  of  imagination,  but  in  compara- 
tive approach  to  scientific  truth,  especially  in 
regard  to  the  great  fact  of  the  unity  of  crea- 
tion, which  astronomy  and  spectrum-analy- 
sis have  confirmed.  It  is  in  virtue  of  this 
superiority  that  they  have  so  long  retained 


222  MORALITY  AND   THEISM 

their  hold  upon  our  minds.  But  their  narra- 
tive of  creation  is  hopelessly  at  variance 
with  scientific  fact,  while  the  authority  of 
some  of  them  as  the  alleged  works  of  Moses, 
even  if  it  could  give  them  a  title  to  accept- 
ance as  records  of  events  anterior  to  the 
existence  of  man,  has  been  totally  over- 
thrown. The  poetry  of  the  Hebrew  books 
will  never  die.  Of  their  cosmogony  we 
must,  once  for  all,  clear  our  minds.  We  are 
in  the  position  of  the  philosophers  of  Greece 
when,  having  emancipated  themselves  from 
the  legendary  cosmogony  of  the  polytheistic 
religion  of  the  state,  they  faced  with  open 
minds  the  problem  of  existence. 

With  belief  in  a  first  cause  the  theory  of 
evolution  need  not  interfere.  Evolution  can- 
not have  evolved  itself.  It  is  a  mode  or 
process,  not  a  creative  force.  Some  power 
there  must  have  been,  if  we  can  trust  the 
indications  of  our  intelligence  on  such  a 
subject,  to  set  evolution  on  foot  and  to 
direct  it  in  its  course.  Those  who  think  to 
account  for  all  things  by  the  hypothesis  of 
a  vast  alternation  between  homogeneity  and 


MORALITY  AND   THEISM  223 

heterogeneity  stand  in  need  of  a  prime 
motor;  otherwise,  whichever  of  the  alternate 
processes  they  take  postulates  the  other  as 
its  antecedent,  and  so  backwards  to  infinity. 
In  plain  language,  they  must  have  something 
to  set  the  see-saw  going.  If  this  objection 
is  said  to  be  rather  metaphysical,  the  answer 
is  that  a  hypothesis,  before  it  can  be  applied 
to  facts,  must  be  shown  to  be  intelligible 
and  tenable  in  itself;  a  condition  not  ful- 
filled by  a  hypothesis  of  original  alternation. 

It  may  be  that  evolution,  as  some  say, 
gives  us  a  worthier  idea  of  the  majesty  of 
the  Deity,  who,  instead  of  perpetual  inter- 
vention, has,  once  for  all,  commanded  his 
agents,  and  endowed  them  with  the  power, 
to  work  out  the  universal  plan.  At  the 
same  time  the  Deity  seems  to  be  removed  to 
an  immeasurable  distance  from  us.  It  is 
difficult  to  understand  how  we  can  retain 
the  practice  of  prayer,  at  least  for  anything 
material.  Belief  in  special  providence  evolu- 
tion seems  absolutely  to  preclude. 

The  old  proof  of  the  existence  of  a  Deity, 
which  satisfied  Paley  and  the  authors  of  the 


224  MORALITY  AND   THEISM 

Bridgewater  treatises,  was  the  design  assumed 
to  be  visible  in  creation.  But  what  is  visi- 
ble in  creation  is  not  design;  it  is  only 
adaptation,  from  which  we  are  not  warranted 
in  directly  inferring  design.  Adapted  to 
each  other  things  must  have  been;  otherwise 
the  world  could  not  have  come  into  exist- 
ence, or,  when  it  had  come  into  existence, 
have  held  together.  The  arrangement  of  the 
vertebrae  is  necessary  to  the  support  of  the 
skull.  The  position  of  the  pebble  beneath  is 
necessary  to  the  support  of  the  pebble  above, 
though  we  do  not  take  the  adaptation  for 
a  proof  of  design.  We  have  no  other  world 
to  compare  with  this,  and,  therefore,  no 
means  of  learning  what  could  come  by  chance 
or  blind  evolution  and  what  could  not. 
Paley's  man  who  finds  the  watch  is  able  to 
compare  it  with  unwrought  matter.  He 
knows  that  human  artificers  exist.  He  is  a 
man  himself  and  can  recognize  the  work  of 
his  fellow. 

The  argument  from  design  has  been  turned 
on  the  upholders  by  the  opponents  of  theism. 
It  has  been  said  that  contrivance  is  human 


MORALITY  AND   THEISM  225 

and  inconsistent  with  our  ideas  of  omnipo- 
tence, which  would  produce  perfection  at 
once  by  fiat.  But  here  we  are  simply  beyond 
the  range  of  our  intelligence.  We  cannot 
divine  which  way  Deity  would  take  to  its 
ends.  There  is  nothing  repugnant  to  reason 
in  the  belief  that  what  presents  itself  to  our 
minds  as  effort  and  a  struggle  towards  per- 
fection, rather  than  perfection  by  fiat,  may 
be  the  course  chosen  by  the  Master  of  the 
universe  and  form  its  law.  On  the  other 
hand,  it  is  evident  that  Paley's  analogy 
breaks  down  again  in  this  respect,  that  God 
is  not  like  a  mechanic,  showing  his  skill  by 
his  handling  of  matter,  which,  with  its  quali- 
ties and  its  resistance,  is  given  to  him  from 
without.  He  is  himself  the  Creator  of  the 
matter  with  which  he  deals. 

Science,  it  is  true,  frequently  uses  teleo- 
logical  language,  language  such  as  implies 
design.  But  from  this  little  can  be  inferred, 
except  that  our  established  phraseology  is 
theistic  and  that  science  falls  involuntarily 
into  the  use  of  the  familiar  terms. 

From  mere  inspection  of  the  universe  we 
Q 


226  MORALITY  AND   THEISM 

can  only  infer  the  existence  of  such  a  Deity 
as  the  universe,  including  the  nature  of 
man,  discloses.  This  seems  to  be  justly 
urged  by  Hume;  and  a  mere  inspection  of 
the  universe,  at  least  of  our  part  of  it,  can 
hardly  be  said  to  disclose  a  moral  Creator. 
The  Creator  disclosed  is  one  who  sends  not 
only  his  sunshine  and  his  rain,  but  his  earth- 
quakes, his  plagues,  and  his  famines,  alike 
upon  the  just  and  the  unjust;  who  takes 
away  by  death  the  good  man  from  the  house- 
hold which  loves  him  and  depends  on  him  for 
bread,  as  well  as  the  wicked  man  from  his 
den  of  crime;  who,  both  among  human  beings 
and  among  brutes,  seems  to  scatter  pain  and 
misery  broadcast.  What  we  see  and  experi- 
ence may  be,  and  probably  is,  but  a  faint 
glimpse  of  the  universal  plan.  But  from 
what  we  see  and  experience  the  combination 
of  omnipotence  with  beneficence,  as  we  con- 
ceive the  one  or  the  other,  cannot  be  inferred. 
For  their  ultimate  union  we  must  look  behind 
the  veil.  True,  human  effort  is  repaid,  but 
it  is  human. 

In  our  own  planet  waste,  wreck,  and  abor- 


MORALITY  AND   THEISM  227 

tion  hold  divided  empire  with  economy,  per- 
fection, and  fruitfulness.  In  our  satellite, 
the  telescope  tells  us,  they  reign  alone. 
Nothing  apparently  warrants  us  in  assuming 
that  the  character  of  the  Creator  is  reflected 
by  one  side  of  creation,  not  by  the  other. 

Pessimism  may  be  said  to  be  the  reverie 
of  disappointment  and  satiety,  with  an  infu- 
sion of  Byronic  sentiment  and  of  the  melan- 
choly of  Schopenhauer  and  Leopardi.  But  it 
has,  at  all  events,  been  able  to  show  that 
the  theological  optimism  against  which  it 
revolts  is  only  less  irrational  than  itself. 
It  has,  at  all  events,  put  an  end  to  the 
attempts  of  the  complacent  optimist  to  vindi- 
cate the  Creator  and  establish  the  theistic 
hypothesis  by  representing  pain,  suffering, 
and  evil  generally  as  mere  negation.  To 
give  that  pious  legerdemain  its  death-blow 
a  Lisbon  earthquake,  a  famine,  or  a  pes- 
tilence is  not  needed.  A  toothache  will 
suffice. 

Neither  from  sense  nor  from  science  can 
we  be  said  to  have  actual  proof  of  the 
existence  of  intelligence  other  than  our 


228  MORALITY  AND   THEISM 

own,  or  even  of  any  life  other  than  that 
which  exists  on  our  planet.  Such  is  the 
fact.  But  the  mere  statement  of  it  seems  to 
carry  the  conviction  that  the  range  of  our 
senses,  even  with  the  aid  of  science  and  all 
its  instruments,  must  be  narrow.  It  is  in- 
conceivable that  we  should  be  the  sole  con- 
scious denizens  of  the  universe.  As  has 
been  said  before,  there  is  no  reason  for  the 
presumption  that  the  information  of  our 
senses,  or  of  science,  which  draws  its  know- 
ledge from  the  senses,  is  exhaustive.  We  are 
in  a  universe  our  knowledge  of  which  is 
probably  mere  purblindness.  Gravitation  is 
only  a  fact  observed  but  unexplained.  Mind 
itself,  as  it  is  in  us,  may  not  be  ultimate. 

It  seems  impossible  to  imagine  our  intelli- 
gence, whatever  the  mode  of  its  development, 
is  without  an  intelligent  author. 

Science  shows  that  the  universe,  so  far  as 
it  falls  within  our  vision,  is  pervaded  and 
ruled  by  a  single  power,  which,  as  its  opera- 
tions reveal  themselves  to  our  minds,  we 
cannot  help  divining  to  be  a  mind.  Mono- 
theism is  at  all  events  perfectly  consistent 


MORALITY  AND   THEISM  229 

with  the  results  of  physical  science;  while 
with  polytheism  science  has  done  away. 
Hence,  science  and  religion,  even  the  most 
fervent  religion,  have  been  able  to  dwell 
together  in  the  intellects  of  Newton  and 
Faraday. 

In  metaphysical  arguments  there  is  little 
comfort.  Anselm  thought  that  he  had  proved 
the  existence  of  a  Deity  by  the  argument 
that  our  notion  of  the  Deity  was  perfection 
and  that  perfection  implied  existence.  Des- 
cartes reproduced  the  argument  substantially 
under  a  different  form.  Existence  must  enter 
into  our  notion  of  a  centaur  or  a  griffin,  and 
is,  in  those  cases,  notional  only,  affording  no 
proof  that  the  thing  of  which  we  think  is 
real.  To  all  proofs  of  the  existence  of  God 
derived  from  supposed  mental  necessity,  it 
seems  to  be  a  sufficient  answer  that  belief 
in  God  has  been,  and  is,  absent  from  some 
minds  otherwise  sound  and  normal.  These 
seem  like  relics  of  the  scholastic  fancy  that 
the  mind  is  a  casket  containing  in  itself 
knowledge  about  the  universe  which  is  ca- 
pable of  being  educed  by  a  logical  process 


230  MORALITY  AND   THEISM 

apart  from  observation  of  the  universe  itself. 
Nothing  metaphysical  has  ever  taken  much 
hold  on  general  intelligence  or  exerted  much 
influence  on  practical  faith.  A  fervent  reli- 
gion, metaphysically  kindled,  or  even  a  lively 
conception  of  the  character  of  the  Deity  de- 
rived from  metaphysical  speculation,  it  would 
surely  be  hard  to  find. 

Intuitionists  would  settle  the  question  by 
laying  it  down  that  there  are  always  present 
in  intelligence,  whether  developed  or  nas- 
cent, three  ideas;  consciousness  of  the  world, 
consciousness  of  self,  and  consciousness  of 
God.  As  has  been  already  said,  there  are 
men  who,  if  they  know  the  contents  of  their 
own  intelligence,  are  without  a  consciousness 
of  God.  Can  this  intuition  of  a  Deity  be 
proved  to  exist  in  the  mind  quite  indepen- 
dently of  any  notion  derived  from  without 
either  through  education  or  tradition?  If  it 
can,  we  may  accept  it  as  decisive.  If  it  can- 
not, its  testimony  fails.  We  need  not  go  on 
to  ask  what  sort  of  Deity  it  is  that  is  thus 
intuitively  revealed,  that  of  Jehovah,  that  of 
Jupiter,  that  of  Allah,  that  of  the  All- 


MORALITY  AND   THEISM  231 

Father  presented  by  the  teachings  of  Jesus, 
an  amalgam  of  them  all,  or  a  cold  and  filmy 
abstraction. 

On  the  other  hand,  there  can  be  no  doubt 
as  to  the  historical  importance  of  the  reli- 
gious sense  in  man,  or  as  to  the  failure  of 
some  of  the  attempts  of  evolutionists  to 
wrest  the  history  of  religion  into  conformity 
with  their  system.  The  source  of  religion 
has  been  found  in  dreams  about  departed 
chieftains.  It  would  be  curious  to  see  the 
connection  traced  between  such  dreams  and 
the  religion  of  Jesus,  or  that  of  Bacon,  Pas- 
cal, Butler,  and  Newton.  Did  all  primeval 
men  dream  about  departed  chieftains?  How 
did  the  religious  tendency  become  universal? 
How  could  a  dream  lead  even  to  the  most 
primitive  forms  of  worship,  such  as  the 
adoration  of  the  sun?  That  religion  began 
in  fetish-worship  is  a  theory  held  by  phi- 
lology to  be  precarious.  That  its  primitive 
form  was  a  worship  of  the  powers  of  nature, 
especially  of  those  which  most  influence  the 
life  of  man,  and  of  the  sun  above  all,  may 
be  taken  to  be  true;  but  this  accounts  only 


232  MORALITY  AND   THEISM 

for  the  selection  of  objects,  not  for  the  exist- 
ence of  the  sentiment  itself.  We  can  hardly 
imagine  that  the  grandeur  and  powers  of 
nature  produce  any  sentiment  of  awe  or  ten- 
dency to  worship  in  animals.  Neither  in  the 
primitive  direction  of  the  religious  sentiment 
nor  in  its  aberrations,  brutish  or  cruel  as 
some  of  them  were,  is  there  anything  to 
repel  the  suggestion  that  it  had  its  source 
in  reality  and  betokens  a  connection  between 
humanity  and  the  Spirit  of  the  Universe. 

Paley  may  have  been  right  in  saying  that 
the  Deity  could  reveal  himself  only  in  mira- 
cle. If  he  does  not  reveal  he  may  yet  mani- 
fest himself  without  miracle  through  human 
nature  and  history,  through  the  discoveries 
of  science  and  by  other  than  supernatural 
means.  If  there  is  a  Deity,  the  reasonable 
presumption  surely  is  that  he  will  manifest 
himself  to  creatures  capable  of  receiving  the 
manifestation.  His  counsel  may  be  that 
instead  of  his  revealing  himself  to  us,  we 
should  feel  after  him  and  find  him. 

Rational  theology  has,  perhaps,  hardly  taken 
sufficient  notice  of  our  sense  of  beauty  in  its 


MORALITY  AND   THEISM  233 

different   grades,    from   the    sublimity   of    the 
star-lit  heaven  to  the  loveliness  of  the  hum- 
ming-bird,   or   of   the    poetry  arid    art  which 
are  the  expressions  of  that  sense.     It  would 
be    difficult    to    account    for   beauty,    or   the 
sense  of  beauty,  by  physical  evolution,  while 
their    presence    and    the    charm    which    they 
throw   over    life    seem    to   bespeak    a    certain 
tenderness  on  the  part  of  the  Being  in  whose 
power  we  are  which  softens  the  stern  aspect 
of  evolution.     The  same  may  be  said  of  the 
poetic   element  in  man,  which  as  yet  no  one 
has   undertaken   to    trace    to    physical    evolu- 
tion;  of  the  sentimental  love,   which   is   not 
essential    to   procreation;    and    of    the    moral 
beauty,  which,  though  connected,  is  not  iden- 
tical  with  practical    usefulness.      Adaptation 
is  produced  by  evolution;  but  it  is  only  in  a 
secondary  sense  that  we  call  adaptation  beau- 
tiful.     Darwin's  loss  of  taste  for  poetry  and 
art  is  remarkable;  he  seems  to  have  felt  it  as 
a   defect  and  as   the   atrophy  of  an  essential 
part  of  his  nature,  not  as  the  necessary  result 
of  devotion  to  scientific  truth. 

Man's  notion  of  God  has  risen  from  nature- 


234  MORALITY  AND   THEISM 

worship,  it  may  be  from  fetishism,  to  the 
conception  of  the  Heavenly  Father  who  is 
the  idealization  of  our  own  moral  nature. 
Anthropomorphism  still  clings  to  our  theism; 
the  very  name  of  Father  involves  it;  so  do 
those  of  Benefactor  and  Judge;  nor  can  we 
think  of  a  personal  God  without  importing 
human  personality  into  the  idea.  But  a  short- 
coming in  our  power  of  conception  does  not 
prove  the  object  of  our  thoughts  to  be  unreal. 
We  fail  to  conceive  infinity,  yet  we  are  sure 
that  the  universe  is  infinite.  For  the  purpose 
of  natural  theology  and  especially  of  inquiries 
like  the  present,  it  might  be  well  to  say  Power 
or  Soul  of  the  Universe  instead  of  God. 

Of  the  attempts  to  construct  for  us  a  reli- 
gion without  a  God,  it  may  surely  be  said 
that  they  serve  only  to  show  the  tenacity  of 
the  religious  sentiment  and  the  void  which 
is  left  in  the  heart  by  the  departure  of  reli- 
gion. Of  the  Comtist  Religion  of  Humanity 
we  have  spoken  already.  We  have  only  to 
ask  once  more  how  it  is  possible  for  us 
to  bow  down  in  adoration  to  an  abstraction 
which  is  insensible  to  our  worship.  An 


MORALITY  AND   THEISM  235 

abstraction,  in  fact,  Comte's  Great  Being 
must  be;  it  cannot  even  have  so  much  sub- 
stance as  there  would  be  in  a  generalization, 
since,  history  being  unfinished,  the  basis  for 
the  generalization  is  incomplete.  The  Posi- 
tivist  ritual  and  calendar,  which  are  a  fanci- 
ful reproduction  of  Catholicism,  appear  to 
have  taken  little  hold  compared  with  the 
philosophic  part  of  the  system;  while  even 
the  philosophic  part  has  taken  hold  less  as 
a  scientific  solution  than  as  a  negation  of 
the  theistic  view.  The  alleged  account  of 
history  as  a  succession  of  theistic,  metaphysi- 
cal, and  Positivist  conceptions  of  the  universe 
cannot  be  verified  by  facts,  which  fail  espe- 
cially in  respect  to  the  metaphysical  period. 
The  Founder  of  the  Religion  of  Humanity 
believed  in  the  finality  of  his  own  system, 
assuming  that  progress  had  reached  its  com- 
pletion in  it,  and  that  he  could  cast  society 
into  its  final  mould.  The  limits  which  he 
undertook  to  set  to  human  knowledge  have, 
in  one  direction,  already  been  overpast.  Sup- 
posing his  theory  of  the  three  periods,  the 
theistic,  the  metaphysical,  and  the  positive, 


236  MORALITY  AND   THEISM 

were  true,  how  could  he  tell  that  Positivism 
was  the  last  birth  of  time  or  that  destiny 
might  not  have  a  fourth  period,  possibly 
even  a  reversion  to  theism  in  store? 

Of  Spiritualism  little  need  be  said.  It 
testifies  to  the  craving  of  mankind  for  some- 
thing beyond  sense,  and  for  something  to  fill 
up  the  blank  left  by  the  failure  of  religious 
faith,  as  well  as  to  the  desire  of  renewing 
communion  with  the  lost  objects  of  affection. 
It  can  hardly  be  admitted  even  to  have  a 
good  title  to  its  name,  since  the  dead  are 
made  to  "materialize,"  and  to  use  material 
instruments  of  communication. 

Nor  can  it  be  necessary  to  dwell  on  the 
different  kinds  of  mysticism  in  which  soli- 
taries or  small  circles  have  taken  refuge, 
thinking  that  by  seclusion  they  can  shut  out 
the  evil  world,  or  soar  above  it  by  spiritual 
ecstasy.  We  are  not  in  Asia;  and  Lamaism, 
though  Schopenhauer  would  commend  to  us 
something  like  it,  with  universal  self-efface- 
ment in  prospect  as  the  ultimate  paradise,  is 
not  likely  to  afford  satisfaction  here. 

Others,  Seeley,  for  instance,  would  give  us, 


MORALITY  AND   THEISM  237 

as  a  substitute  for  definite  belief  in  God,  a 
religion  of  enthusiastic  admiration.  "The 
words  'religion'  and  'worship,'"  says  Seeley, 
"are  commonly  and  conveniently  appropriated 
to  the  feelings  with  which  we  regard  God; 
but  these  feelings,  love,  awe,  admiration, 
which  together  make  up  worship,  are  felt  in 
various  combinations  for  human  beings  and 
even  for  inanimate  objects."  "It  is  not,"  he 
says,  "exclusively,  but  only  par  excellence, 
that  religion  is  directed  towards  God."  Re- 
ligion he  elsewhere  describes  as  "that  higher 
life  of  man  which  is  sustained  by  admira- 
tion," adding  that  "it  has  its  essence  in  wor- 
ship or  some  kind  of  enthusiastic  contempla- 
tion seeking  for  expression  in  outward  acts." 
If  such  is  the  origin  of  art,  he  is  prepared 
to  call  art  religion.  Enthusiastic  nationality 
with  him  is  religion.  He,  and  perhaps  not 
he  alone,  makes  of  the  nation  a  god.  This 
surely  is  mere  playing  with  words  or  worse; 
it  is  an  attempt  to  cheat  us  into  the  impres- 
sion that  we  have  a  religious  belief  when  we 
have  none.  The  objects  of  admiration,  social, 
scientific,  or  aesthetic,  however  salutary  or 


238  MORALITY  AND   THEISM 

elevating  may  be  their  influence,  are  not  a 
Father  hi  heaven.  Ask  the  widow  with  her 
fatherless  children  whether  they  are.  Nor 
does  the  culture  necessary  for  these  lofty  and 
refined  emotions  extend,  or  bid  fair  within 
any  calculable  time  to  extend,  to  the  masses 
of  the  people.  A  clown  who  cannot  read  or 
write  and  who  earns  his  bread  by  the  coarsest 
work  can  take  in  the  idea  of  God  and  of 
divine  rewards  and  punishments  as  thor- 
oughly as  Professor  Seeley  with  all  his  cult- 
ured capacity  for  admiration.  But  it  would 
be  difficult  to  infuse  into  the  clown  a  reli- 
gion of  national  aggrandizement  or  of  art. 

"  Cosmic  emotion  "  presents  itself  only  as  a 
substitute  for  religious  emotion,  since  nothing 
has  been  said  about  embodying  it  in  worship. 
It  comes  to  us  commended  by  poetic  quota- 
tions, and  for  common  hearts  stands  in  need 
of  the  commendation.  Transfer  of  affection 
from  an  all-loving  Father  to  an  adamantine 
universe  is  a  process  which  needs  all  the  aid 
that  the  witchery  of  poetry  can  supply, 
though  the  poetry  itself,  for  aught  that  we 
can  see,  must  be  ground  out  by  the  same 


MORALITY  AND   THEISM  239 

mill  of  evolution  which  grinds  out  virtue  and 
affection.  The  symbols  of  cosmic  emotion 
seem  to  be  the  feelings  produced  by  the  two 
objects  of  Kant's  peculiar  reverence,  the 
starry  heavens  and  the  moral  faculties  of 
man.  But,  after  all,  what  are  these  but 
aggregations  of  molecules  in  a  certain  stage 
of  evolution?  To  be  able  to  feel  cosmic 
emotion,  at  all  events,  you  must  be  sure  that 
you  have  a  cosmos.  The  phrase  law  is 
taken  by  science  from  theology,  or  from 
jurisprudence.  Science  can  tell  us  nothing 
but  phenomena  accumulated  by  experience 
and  methodized,  which  would  not  make  a 
law,  properly  speaking,  though  they  had  been 
observed  through  myriads  of  years.  In  "cos- 
mos "  also  a  theistic  connotation  seems  to 
lurk,  since  order  there  could  hardly  be  without 
an  ordering  power. 

Too  little  notice  has  been  taken  by  moral 
philosophers  of  the  different  situations  and 
circumstances  of  men.  They  write  as  though 
all  men  were  capable  of  philosophy  and  free 
to  follow  its  sublime  advice.  All  men  are 
capable  of  religion;  all  men  can  understand 


240  MORALITY  AND   THEISM 

the  force  of  a  divine  command  and  the  doc- 
trine of  future  reward  or  punishment;  but  it 
is  vain  to  expect  that  a  coal-heaver  will 
appreciate  Shaftesbury's  delineation  of  the 
beauty  of  virtue  like  the  persons  of  refine- 
ment to  whom  it  was  addressed,  or  be  made 
to  glow  with  cosmic  emotion  like  Walt 
Whitman;  and  until  the  structure  of  society 
has  been  radically  changed,  coal-heavers,  or 
multitudes  as  little  philosophic  or  poetic, 
there  will  continue  to  be.  We  may  begin 
to  think  that  we  have  reestablished  religion, 
when  a  practical  impression,  such  as  would 
exhibit  itself  in  worship  or  something  equiva- 
lent to  it,  has  been  made  on  common  and 
uncultivated  minds. 

If  no  divine  command  for  the  practice 
of  virtue  can  be  shown,  if  no  assurance  of 
the  virtuous  man's  reward,  such  as  Paley 
assumes,  can  be  given,  moral  philosophy 
must,  it  would  appear,  be  content  simply 
to  take  the  observation  of  human  nature  as 
its  basis  and  to  build  its  system  on  the 
natural  desires  of  man,  offering  them  such 
satisfaction  as  is  consistent  with  the  welfare 


MORALITY  AND   THEISM  241 

of  the  community  and  the  race.  We  natu- 
rally desire  health,  and  to  be  healthy  means 
to  be  temperate  and  continent;  we  desire, 
for  ourselves  and  our  families,  the  means  of 
living,  and  to  obtain  them  we  must  be  indus- 
trious, frugal,  and  of  good  repute;  we  desire 
domestic  happiness,  and  to  obtain  it  we  must 
practise  the  domestic  virtues;  we  desire  the 
good-will  of  our  fellow-men  with  the  advan- 
tages which  it  brings,  and  to  obtain  it  we 
must  practise  the  virtues  of  good  members  of 
society  and  good  citizens.  There  is  no  such 
thing  as  altruism  in  the  literal  sense  of  that 
term.  Self  is  present  in  all  we  do,  though 
the  self  is  that  of  a  being  who  desires  love 
and  fellowship  as  well  as  food  and  raiment; 
with  which  qualification  the  philosophy  which 
has  resolved  morality  into  self-interest, 
though  much  decried,  would  be  right  enough. 
No  man  ever  really  acts  against  what  he 
apprehends  at  the  time  to  be  his  interest, 
though  his  interest  may  lead  him  to  sacrifice 
his  animal  or  individual  to  his  domestic  or 
social  desires. 

The    good   which   we   do   to   others    yields 


242  MORALITY  AND   THEISM 

us  a  deeper  and  more  lasting  satisfaction 
than  the  good  which  we  do  to  ourselves. 
This  is  a  pregnant  fact  and  may  seem  to 
indicate  the  purpose  of  the  author  of  our 
nature,  if  our  nature  has  an  author,  and  to 
promise  a  social  consummation  before  the 
close.  How  far  devotion  to  the  interests  of 
the  race  and  heroic  or  philanthropic  action 
will  be  affected  by  the  departure  of  theistic 
belief  will  be  seen  when  the  kingdom  of 
atheism  or  agnosticism  has  fully  come.  But 
it  is  not  by  such  a  figment  as  posthumous 
fame  that  the  hearts  of  reasoning  beings  will 
be  lifted  above  selfish  desires.  Nor  is  it 
likely  that  tribalism,  however  exalted  or  re- 
fined by  nationality  and  patriotism,  will  act 
as  it  did  on  the  Greek  or  Roman,  in  whom 
still  lived,  though  in  a  sublimated  form,  the 
gregarious  instinct  of  the  herd. 

Intellectual  effort,  while  it  implies  moral 
conditions,  such  as  may  dispose  to  labour  and 
raise  above  sensual  indulgence,  has  motive 
powers  and  attractions  of  its  own  apart 
from  any  which  theism  supplies.  Yet  we 
can  hardly  feel  sure  that  there  is  not  a 


MORALITY  AND   THEISM  243 

theistic  element  in  the  scientific  conscience, 
which  sacrifices  not  only  ease  and  pleasure  but 
sometimes  reputation  and  everything  else  to 
the  pursuit  of  truth. 

Whether  this  is,  as  Leibnitz  thought,  the 
best,  or,  as  Schopenhauer  thought,  the  worst, 
of  all  possible  worlds,  neither  of  them  could 
really  tell.  Neither  of  them  had  any  means 
of  verifying  his  hypothesis  by  comparison  or 
in  any  other  way.  Practically  it  is  a  very 
different  world  for  different  men.  For  the 
Roman  emperor  this  was  not  the  worst  of  all 
possible  worlds;  by  the  Roman  slave  it  could 
hardly  be  deemed  the  best.  Man's  temporal 
estate  is  apparently  capable  of  indefinite  im- 
provement within  the  limits  of  mortality, 
though  the  improvement  will  not  cancel  the 
sufferings  of  the  generations  that  are  past. 

It  takes,  we  are  told,  a  period  of  time 
longer  than  man's  recorded  history  for  a 
ray  of  light  to  reach  the  earth  from  the 
remotest  telescopic  star.  Yet  the  starry  field 
swept  by  the  telescope  is  inconceivably  less 
than  that  which  we  must  assume  to  lie 
beyond.  In  such  a  universe  what  is  the  life 


244  MORALITY  AND   THEISM 

of  a  man?  Our  little  being  is  lost  in 
immensity.  This  thought  and  that  of  the 
impenetrable  mystery  of  existence  are  likely, 
rather  than  cosmic  emotion,  worship  of  hu- 
manity, or  any  of  the  other  substitutes  for 
theism,  to  take  possession  of  the  human  mind 
if  the  belief  in  a  God  is  withdrawn. 


THE   END 


WORKS    BY    PROFESSOR   GOLDWIN    SMITH. 


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